


Human Art

by drosophilase



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M, background Lea Michele/Cory Monteith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:01:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 35,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drosophilase/pseuds/drosophilase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris Colfer is a painter that, at not even 25 years old, has already achieved notoriety, celebration, fame, and become old news in the Los Angeles art scene. When new artists start to outshine him like the infuriatingly good DC, whose San Franciscan art is infiltrating LA magazines and galleries, Chris flees to the little Pacific coastal town Cambria to get his art together. A year after he settles in, he is approached to work on a charity mural for the new headquarters of a local addiction rehabilitation center. It's not until too late that he finds his new boss Cory Monteith has secured another well-known painter to be his collaborative partner for the job-- DC himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Crisscolfer Big Bang 2013-2014.](http://crisscolferbigbang.tumblr.com)
> 
> Art by the wonderful [i-wanna-be-a-klaine-ship-ranger](http://i-wanna-be-a-klaine-ship-ranger.tumblr.com).

Chris squints at the April sun that’s bright even from behind his dark sunglasses.  He’s not used to direct natural sunlight, especially not in the early afternoon when shade is minimal and the clouds of promised _April showers_ are nowhere to be found.

The streamlined front of StraightforwarD is one Chris has passed nearly every day for a year, when it was a lawyer’s office then a boutique and now, all steel grays and stylized lettering, offices for a rehabilitation counseling center.

He says hello to Dianna at the front desk, an acquaintance through a mutual friend for a few months now, and she picks up the phone to inform someone that he’s here.  Chris sits in one of the surprisingly comfortable metal chairs that are arranged around the open lobby, tapping his foot on the bare concrete floors.  Everything is modern beyond belief, and Chris can’t even remember the layout of the shops that took up this space before.

He eyes the walls, sizes them up-- not starkly bare, surrounded as they are by the rest of the decor, but wide and smooth, newly hung drywall just primed in a gunmetal gray-- and just as intently eyes the door.  No one walks through.

Cambria, California is nothing like Los Angeles and nothing like Clovis, and is a sort of uncharted territory that Chris got to claim all for his own.  He loves being able to disappear into the town, reveling in the distinct deficit of both tourists and bigots.  His family and his friends liked to make jokes about “tortured artists,” sometimes still do, but he always waves them off.  He would never have found a residence remotely as well-fitting in LA-- and if living in Cambria means being a little secluded, Chris just counts it as a bonus.

“Chris Colfer?”

Standing up and sliding his phone into his pocket, message to Lea half-finished, Chris holds out his hand.

“Mr. Monteith, right?” he says, having to look up into the face of the man who can’t be much older than him, button-down rolled up to the elbows.  Chris isn’t used to tilting his head to make eye contact, but this guy is _tall_.

“Call me Cory,” he assures Chris, easy smile and firm handshake.  “Follow me.”

Chris does, answering Dianna’s distracted wave and pulling his bag more securely around him.  He follows through a mini labyrinth of glass corridors and sunshine-lit offices to the one marked with Cory’s name and _Founder/Owner_.  There’s two packets on the conference table and Chris raises an eyebrow, says, “Shouldn’t we be waiting on...?”

Cory turns around, following Chris’s gaze back towards the lobby.  “Oh, yeah, let me--”

He turns to the phone on his desk and Chris settles in, underestimating and sending the chair rolling backwards.  Sheepishly, he pulls it back in, though a sidelong glance at Cory says he doesn’t notice.  The folder in front of him is emblazoned with the StraightforwarD logo again, and it gets him thinking about lines and shapes, wondering how modern would look next to traditional, how color could go next to chrome.

The sliding door crashes open, slamming hard into the other side, and Chris jumps, flinching hard.

“Oh, sorry man,” the guy in the doorway says, scratching a hand through his shaggy hair and beard, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he meets Chris’s eyes.  “I’m Darren.”

Chris knows who he is, has seen a handful of pictures online from gallery openings and newspaper articles that put a face to the eminent name.  Darren was part of the reason he left LA, if only indirectly-- demand for commissioned art went down, Chris hit a rough patch and couldn’t finish a collection in time to meet gallery deadlines, and it started to feel like the city was closing in around him.  DC was the hottest thing on the art market, leaving Chris as yesterday’s news.

“Chris Colfer,” he says finally, standing up and trying to play off the way the chair rebounds off the wall behind him.  Concrete floors are no joke.

“I know who you are,” Darren says as they shake hands, inflecting like how dare anyone suggest otherwise.  “Your collection, the one...”

“ _Once?”_ Chris supplies, gentle with his chair as he sits back down.

“Ah fuck, that’s it, _Once Upon A Time._ It was incredible.  I had to beg my agent to get me in to the opening night.  Incredible.”

Chris can’t help but smile at the gushing, still taken aback at the rugged appearance and humble words that were giving a very different impression than anything he’s ever seen or heard about Darren.

“Thank you,” he manages, thankfully saved by Cory joining them at the table.  He and Darren hug like lifelong friends and then they settle in, Darren balancing his chin on a fist.

“Welcome to StraightforwarD.  All of this is kind of the culmination of everything I’ve ever wanted to do,” Cory begins, and Chris nods empathetically.  “And I just found out this week that it’s not just going to be here in Cambria, I’ve got someone who loves our philosophy and wants to open a branch in LA, and some interest in other cities-- Vegas, San Diego.  It’s unreal.”

Cory looks down for a second, smiling in a twisted-up kind of awe, and Chris looks at Darren, whose eyes are wide and soft behind his glasses.

“It’s unreal,” he repeats, “so many things are, but I know you both specialize in kind of capturing emotions and making them visual and tangible, and I’m really honored to have you two collaborating on this mural.”

“My agent didn’t even have to finish describing it for me to jump at the chance,” Darren interjects, curls bouncing around as he speaks.

Chris smiles as warmly as he can at Cory.  “The honor is all mine, really.”

It’s hard to stay strictly professional when Cory talks openly about his struggle with addiction, how he’d barely made it to 35 on five different trips to rehab, sheer force of will and the strong friend support base he found when he moved to L.A. as a struggling actor.  He mentions Dianna more than a few times.

Cory shows them pictures, reads them success stories, gives them statistics.  It’s eye-opening for Chris, who has never had personal contact with any sort of addiction.  He would never have pegged Cory as anything other than a successful young businessman and that’s-- sort of the point, Chris realizes, thumbing through his own stack of papers.

“It’s an invisible disease,” Cory is finishing up, motioning for Chris and Darren to flip to the last pages of their packets, “and it’s a challenge just to ask for help.  I’m so lucky to be able to share my own story and encourage other people to get the help they need.  So, now that StraightforwarD hasn’t saved just my own life, but to date, over 250 other people have completed our program-- We want to celebrate.”

Chris flips to the last page as Cory does, and Darren does across from him.

“In just over six weeks we’re throwing a Homecoming Gala in our new, permanent headquarters here in Cambria.  All the program participants in the area are invited, as well as the seed team for our new outfit in Los Angeles.  We’ve got a whole list of local dignitaries and company CEOs that made big donations to our cause, and some of the other interested parties that have contacted me are invited as well.   We’re finishing up the planning at this point--Dianna, of course, is the mastermind behind everything here-- but what I want at the center of it all is the unveiling of a mural that covers the front lobby.”

Interrupting, Chris asks, “How many walls?  What are the dimensions?”  He ignores Darren’s curious glance.

“Here, let me just show you,” Cory offers with a smile, and Chris tucks his packet carefully into his bag before following them back into the silvery, sun-lit lobby.

Chris is already thinking, mind spinning with concepts and themes and color palettes, hardly caring that Darren and Cory are attached at the hip, their height difference ridiculous as they rammer on about some ball game.  Clearing his throat pointedly, Chris taps his pen against his legal pad until they get the idea.

“Oh, yeah,” Cory says hurriedly, greeting Dianna and the few patrons in the waiting room by name before gesturing at the walls.  “I want something here, by the front doors, where people can see it when they’re sitting down.  Something that trails up over the windows, sort of creeps down the hall towards the offices.”

“Colors? Themes?” Chris cuts in, already sketching the bones of the space on his pad.

“Er, isn’t that what you creative types do?” Cory asks sheepishly, and Chris cuts his eyes up to see him scratching nervously at the back of his neck.  A muffled giggle makes him look at Darren, who just smiles when Chris raises an eyebrow.

“So we have full creative control?” Chris clarifies, half-amused and half-disbelieving.  In his nearly four years of taking on commissions he’s had dozens of clients, and none of them ever had a _lack_ of creative direction.

“Uh… yes,” Cory says, not sounding at all sure.

Chris eyes him, then goes back to sketching.  “I’ll need dimensions of the space if you have them, and you should since the internal renovations were just recently done.  If not, I have a tape measure, and surely you have a ladder somewhere.”

He looks up from his grid paper again, and Cory is gaping.  He does _not_ acknowledge the amused stare from Darren he can see out of the corner of his eye.

“Yeah, I’ll just--” Cory starts, looking around helplessly until Dianna finally takes mercy on him.

“I’ll get those for you, Chris,” she says, laughing.  “I’ll call the company that did our renovations.”

Chris thanks her and shakes hands with Cory, tells him he’ll email a schedule of the dates and times they will have to work after the office is closed to keep the mural’s progress secret, like Cory insists upon.

He’s all the way out of the double doors and slipping his sunglasses back on before Darren catches up with him.

“Hey, Chris!” he calls like Chris is a football field away and not ten feet.  “Wait up.”

Rolling his eyes behind the dark lenses, Chris fights the urge to cross his arms.  “Hey yourself.”

“I just wanted to say that I’m really looking forward to working with you.  Did you want to get my number so we can start working things out on the mural?  I’ve got a townhouse down near the beach I’m renting for the next six weeks, we can--”

“Your contact info is on the first sheet of the packet Cory gave us,” Chris gently reminds him.  “And I prefer email.”

“Oh, right,” Darren says, pulling his own copy, folded and crumpled, out of his back pocket.  “Perfect.”

“I assume you’re free from obligations other than this project?” Chris continues, still preoccupied with his mental checklist of pre-project items.

“I brought a hundred yards of canvas and just as many paint brushes with me, but nothing that has a deadline, no.”

Chris frowns a little at the just-restrained quality of Darren’s voice, the twitch in his mouth and the crinkles around his eyes that appear.  Is he-- keeping himself from _laughing_ at Chris?

Straightening his spine impeccably, Chris nods once and checks the time on his phone for effect.  “Good, I’ll make up a tentative timeline of work once I get the dimensions and email it to you for approval.  I um… hope you get settled into Cambria.  It’s a beautiful town.  See you later.”

Darren looks taken aback for a second at the dismissal, but manages to smile.  “See you later, Chris Colfer.”

Chris does not turn his head to look as he drives right by the storefront towards his apartment, even though Darren is still standing right where he left him.

*

As Chris tucks away the leftovers in the fridge (the Chinese place around the corner is his kryptonite, but his eyes are always bigger than his stomach) he finally faces his open sketchbook on the table.

It’s been a while since he’s done anything customer-specific, and been almost as long since he’s actually been happy, or even finished, with anything.  There’s a whole stack of half-finished canvases in his makeshift studio in the second bedroom and a bigger stack of scrapped ones that made their way unceremoniously into the big dumpster in the back alley.  Chris puts on a good front, but even he has to accept that the only good pieces in his gallery are the ones from _Once_ he couldn’t bear to put up for sale, and even those he doubts sometimes.  Most of the others are just replications of the scenery around Cambria-- they sell to the tourists and keep Chris in Chinese noodles and his shelter-rescue cat Brian in Fancy Feast.

He sketches out the room again, double-checking the proportions to the measurements that Dianna had emailed him before she left the office that day, true to her word.

Pencil poised over the page, he considers the bare bones sketch.  Shades around the windows and gives the room dimension.  Thinks about the sun that streams in through one set of windows in the morning and through another in the afternoon.  Draws two lines tentatively and promptly scrubs them out.  Stands up and pours a glass of wine from the bottle he cracked into yesterday.

He needs to send emails anyway.  Leaning against the cabinets, Chris ignores the email waiting for him from Lea (The preview reads _HOW many ways do I have to try to contact you????!),_ taps out a quick reply to Dianna ( _Just what I needed, thanks a million!_ ) and double-checks the email listed under Darren’s name in his packet from Cory before typing it into the box.

_Darren--_

_Here’s a forward of the email from Dianna at StraightforwarD with the lobby’s dimensions and a few .jpegs of the original blueprints to account for the space around the windows.  If you have a timeframe for the completion of your first sketch, we can schedule a meeting and collaborate in a day or two._

_\--Chris Colfer_

He refills his wine glass and makes for his sketchpad again, turning after a second of thought to take the bottle with him.  If Van Gogh could do _Starry Night_ on absinthe, half a bottle of Pinot Grigio certainly can’t hurt at this point.

Two glasses more and there’s not much of a mural, but there is an intricately detailed llama on the other side of the window and a ragged patch where he erased too hard.

“Fuck it,” Chris says out loud, tipping his head back to drain his wine glass and groaning when his phone chimes-- another text from Lea.  He doesn’t open it, going back to his laptop and his still-open email interface, where there’s another new message on top of Lea’s.

It’s from Darren.  There’s a fucking _smiley face_ added to the subject line and at least two exclamation marks in the preview, and Chris finds that suddenly, there is something he wants to read even less than the messages from Lea.  So he clicks on her email instead.

_HOW many ways do I have to try to contact you????!_

_You better have a GOOD reason for ignoring me, buddy.  And a quote unquote “art block” is not a valid excuse for shutting yourself off from the world either.  You’re not gonna find inspiration in those exposed brick walls OR your cat.  Oh god, please don’t find any inspiration in your cat. I cannot be best friends with the Crazy Cat Painter._

_ANYWAYS if you’d pick up your phone or READ MY TEXTS you’d see that I’m doing swimmingly, filming is grand, and this cast is full of precious gays to have martinis with me on friday nights._

_BUT THEY AREN’T YOU so call me sometime. Or I’m gonna start sending you texts of half-naked women.  Don’t think I wouldn’t._

“That bitch,” Chris says out loud, giggling at the email and at himself and at nothing in particular, scaring Brian enough to have him streak out of the kitchen and under the living room couch.

Still laughing, and before he can overthink it, Chris clicks on Darren’s email.

_Subject: Re: StraightforwarD Mural :)_

_Thanks for the specs!  That will work!  I’ve driven by half a dozen cool, trendy coffee houses here and I haven’t tried any of them, so pick the best one and we can meet there Wednesday afternoon.  Around 3, yeah?  That gives me 36 hours or so, so I better get started now :) See you!_

Chris raises his wine glass to his lips again before he remembers he’s already drained it.  All at once the process of thinking and forming sentences (let alone _lines_ ) feels horribly arduous, so he closes the lid of his laptop, fills his glass again and leaves the empty bottle on the counter, abandoning his emails and his barely-started sketch to find Brian and catch up on his Netflix queue.

With 36 hours-- make that 35-- surely he can goof off for just a couple.

*

It doesn’t occur to Chris until after he sends a polite reply to Darren the next morning (he debates for five minutes about removing the smiley face, but decides it would be awkward to just delete it), takes two aspirin and makes it to his second Diet Coke that-- shit, he doesn’t drink coffee.  It’s too late to change the meeting place when he’s already given Darren the name and address of the café smack between Chris’s studio and the grocery store, but it doesn’t make Chris feel like any less of an idiot.

Lea calls as he’s shading in the first draft of the mural sketch that came to him brilliantly in his much-needed morning shower, and he’s high enough on his breakthrough that he answers.

“Sometimes I’m really stupid,” he moans in lieu of a greeting, putting down his pencil to smudge the graphite with his fingers.

“ _You don’t have to tell me that,”_ Lea chirps, and Chris can hear the over-enthusiastic voice of the radio DJ behind her. _“Because only a stupid person would ignore their best friend for two weeks.  I am very aware of how stupid you are.”_

“Gee, thanks,” Chris deadpans, twirling the pencil between his fingers.  “You know just the way to my heart, Lea.”

 _“Of course I do!”_ She laughs, and the ambient music cranks up a notch.  _“I’ll have you know that I am on my way to filming my first crying scene on the silver screen.  I couldn’t be more thrilled.”_

Chris rolls his eyes.  “Oh, how you love to cry on command.”

_“Okay, enough about me. Tell me about you, Mr. Mysterious Reclusive Mysterious Artist.  You can’t just board yourself away in your hidey hole now that I’m busy.  Spill.”_

“I leave home way too often to be called reclusive.”  Chris doodles at the edge of his draft, not sure how much he should tell.  “Well, I started that mural job I told you I got the proposal for a while ago.  The one for the rehabilitation center?”

 _“Mmhmm,”_ Lea affirms.  _“And?”_

“Well,” Chris hedges, taking a deep breath, “what I _didn’t_ tell you is that it’s actually a collaborative project.”

 _“Christopher,”_ Lea scolds, and Chris huffs impatiently. _“‘Collaborate’ is not even in your vocabulary.  I know for a fact you got ‘Doesn’t play well with others’ comments on your elementary school report cards.  Your mom showed them to me.”_

Chris makes a mental note to have a calm but thorough talk with his mother, and then says, “I _know,_ believe me, I know.  But it’s for charity, and I was just spinning my wheels here without something to work on and-- my project partner is Darren Criss.”

_“Wait a fucking second. **The** DC?”_

“Yes,” Chris says solemnly.  “And he is twice as handsome when he’s all overgrown and casual, not in a suit with the hair and the smarmy smile.  It’s awful.”

Lea laughs, and Chris huffs at her again.  _“Awful?  A project that’s good publicity with eye candy to boot?  Sounds pretty sweet to me.”_

“Mm, the founder of the company isn’t so bad himself,” Chris goads, “and he’s totally straight.”

 _“Well, I might just have to clear my schedule for a visit,”_ Lea says airily.  _“And you are going to have to stop avoiding the subject.”_

Chris sighs, putting his head down on the wooden tabletop.  Brian curls curiously around his ankles.  “He uh-- admires me, apparently.  The first thing he said to me was a compliment on _Once._ He thinks I have it all together when I clearly don’t, I’m this washed up has-been who ran out of town when shit got hard, and he’s this up-and-coming artistic genius--”

 _“Woah woah woah,”_ Lea cuts him off.  There’s no more music filtering through her words.  _“The Chris Colfer I know is hot shit.  The Chris Colfer I met was the king of that art gallery, stood tall and proud and confident.”_

“Yeah, who’s that guy? Because I’d like to meet him.”

_“Shut up Chris. You’re the shit.  You have a lot of talent, everyone knows that.  Apparently this Darren guy knows that, and that’s good.  He should know you’re the shit.  He should fear and revere you for being the shit.  And you, being the shit, can surely spare a little brilliance to work with someone who is an up-and-coming shit and do something good for a great cause.”_

“I think you lost your metaphor a little bit there,” is all Chris can manage through his restrained laughter, tears in the corners of his eyes and the hard lodge of something like fondness in his chest.

 _“You’re welcome for the pep talk,”_ Lea trills smugly, and Chris doesn’t feel quite so fond anymore.  _“I gotta run before I get dirty looks from the hair and makeup girls.  Kisses!”_

“Bye, Lea,” Chris says, although he’s pretty sure the line is already dead.

He puts down his phone and shakes his head-- at what exactly, he’s not sure. Himself, probably, for somehow getting this relationship out of a frenzied gush, hug, posed picture, and number exchange that had all seemed comfortable and right in the moment, with the buzz of alcohol in his belly at his fairytale night of a gallery opening. That led to an invitation for drinks the next night and then a standing drink date and then too many brunches and then-- a friend.  A _best_ friend, according to Lea, though Chris knows he’s not the only person she gives the endearment to.  It’s nice to be needed, though, and to have someone who seems more adept at reading gay men than straight ones.  She’d gotten him out of more than one awkward bar chat.

But not even Lea could help him with the nervous energy that’s making him fidget and his tongue feel thick in his mouth as he walks up to the designated coffee shop two minutes before three o’clock.  His sketchbook is tucked snugly into his bag and he runs a hand over his soft blue tee shirt to calm his nerves. It's been a while since he's had to hold a piece of art to someone else's approval, and he didn't realize he'd reverted back to being terrified about it. He might as well be barely 18 again.

Darren's already sprawled out over a table for four, his sketchbook big enough to take up more than half the table. He's got a little crowd standing a respectful three feet behind him and there are curious heads craning from their spot in line.

Chris joins the queue, and doesn't know if he should be surprised or not. He hasn't heard of Darren doing street art or even live demos, but the showing off seems pretty in-character.

He wrinkles his nose at the list of drinks, every word seeming more foreign than the last. The barista seems genuine about answering questions, though, so Chris gratefully lets her pick his drink and hands over his credit card.

When they call his name he gives the barista another little nod of thanks and sips tentatively at his drink (something sweet and vanilla, some undertones of caramel and not a hint of coffee, thank god) and joins the little crowd watching Darren.

He's finishing a sketch of one of the fountains out in the square, shading and adding two figures sitting on the bench in the foreground. Chris follows his line of sight and recognizes the sketched couple standing there in the flesh, two men that are grinning widely at Darren and at each other.

Within ten minutes, Darren is scrawling his initials and the date in the corner and tearing the sheet out of his sketchbook with a flourish, nodding in acknowledgement of the applause of the crowd as he passes the drawing across the table to the couple.

They haven't even uttered a thank you before half the crowd is jockeying for position and asking for art from Darren. Chris taps his foot, annoyed, but Darren just smiles and says something he can't hear over the commotion.

"Sorry, everyone," Chris says, loud enough that all but one very insistent middle-aged woman stops and looks at him. "But DC is otherwise engaged for the next hour or two."

Darren has to physically twist all the way around in his chair to see Chris, and he does, grinning, ignoring the woman and turning to watch Chris walk all the way around the table and sit across from him.

"You have a lot of admirers," Chris comments, the unkind edge to his voice glaringly obvious, but Darren just smiles harder, leans in.

"Artists on the street are a dime a dozen in LA, which is funny because I bet half these tourists are from there. An artist in a tiny artsy town is a novelty," he waves his hand. "But anyways. Hey."

"Hello," Chris replies cautiously, pulling out his sketchbook and smoothing his hands over the cover.

"You show me yours and I'll show you mine?" Darren says ridiculously, waggling his eyebrows, and Chris can't stop the short burst of laughter that bubbles out of him.

He shakes his head a little. Nothing to be silly about. He and Darren are professionals. He opens his sketchbook to the flat conceptual sketch and motions for Darren to do the same.

"One," Chris says slowly.

"Three!" Darren yells, snatching Chris's book and shoving his own blindly into Chris's face so that he nearly cuts his lip on the paper edges.

"Three," Chris echoes dully, and oh, he had so much to worry about.

Darren's sketch is-- really good. Undeniably good, clean and cohesive and imaginative. It's also _nothing_ like Chris's. Where Chris has lines and patterns, Darren has curves and whimsy. Where Chris focused on the structure of rehabilitation, Darren's drawn some celebration of freedom. This sketch is so much better than his.

"Shit, yours is so much better than mine," Darren says, low and awed. Chris almost scoffs but he looks dead serious, drawn-together eyebrows the only part of him Chris can see.

"Let's um," Chris starts, clearing his throat, "put them next to each other, see what we've got."

Darren lays Chris's sketchbook down carefully, and Chris slots Darren's into place just below it.

There's no way in hell those two concepts will ever work together.

“This is a disaster,” Chris says, slamming his sketchbook closed and putting a hand up to massage his temple.  Darren unceremoniously rips his sketch out, balls it up and throws it across the room.  It falls a foot short of the trash can, but he just shrugs.

“Let’s start over,” he says grandly, and Chris nods gravely, dutifully opening his sketchbook to a new page-- only to have a hand stop his pencil.  Chris looks up, raising his eyebrows.

“Not with this,” Darren dismisses, gesturing with his other hand to include the sketchbook and Chris’s carefully organized drafting pencil collection.  “Forget the design.”

Chris opens his mouth in shock and doesn’t get past, “How _dare--”_ before Darren is speaking over him.

“Not _forever_ , of course not forever.  I’m just as committed to this project as you are.  But that’s the problem.  This is _our_ project.  These sketches are your concept and my concept.  See the problem?”

Chris tilts his chin down, still not completely sure what Darren is getting at.  “So in order to move forward on _our_ project we need _our_ sketch?”

“Bingo!” Darren proclaims, sounding like Chris’s dad that time he managed to make it to first base in T-ball.  “And to get there, we need to be a team.  Dinner, tomorrow night.  I would say tonight but I’ve got a conference call I can’t reschedule.”

Not noticing Chris’s utter lack of reaction, he plows on, “I’ll pick you up at six? I’m sure you know lots of great places to eat.  Anywhere is fine, your choice.”

Because there’s no reason to protest other than blurting out something beyond embarrassing, Chris nods and says as cheerily as he can manage, “Absolutely!  That sounds-- great. Just great.”

*

Chris rolls his eyes as soon as Lea’s name pops up on his phone screen, even though he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.

“All I needed was a yes or no,” he says, too irritated for a greeting, “I sent you a picture, not an invitation for suggestions.”

 _“Christopher!”_ Lea shrieks, and Chris pulls the phone away from his ear, wincing.  _“Why are you sending me mirror selfies of button-downs and ties?  What the hell is this?”_

He sighs, turning in the mirror again and craning his neck to get the full picture.  “I have a dinner. Sort of.”

Lea shrieks incoherently.  Chris puts her on speakerphone to spare his ears, taking off the button-down he’s just decided is too striped.  _“It’s with Darren, isn’t it?  I told you!  You wore that t-shirt I sent you last month, didn’t you?  The model I worked with swore by it for ‘maximum bicep girth’ and oh--”_

“Lea, please stop,” Chris begs, squinting close to the mirror and cursing the freckles already popping up on the bridge of his nose.  “Yes, it’s with Darren, but it’s strictly for our _working_ relationship-- I _mean_ that Lea, shut your mouth-- so I just need to wear something that says I care about this project, and I care about how I look and I care about how Darren sees me but only in a very controlled, platonic manner.  Okay?”

 _“Okay,”_ Lea agrees finally, sounding like she’s gearing up for battle.  _“First of all, wear those jeans that make your ass look perkier than Kim Kardashian’s.  They’re dark enough that they can be dressy.  And second of all, take everything with paint stains out of the running.”_

Chris looks closer at the button-down he just took off. Fuck.  “Lea, we only have two hours before I absolutely have to get in the shower.  I need possibilities, not miracles.”

_“Well, I’m insulted.  Don’t you know by now?  Miracles are my specialty.”_

*

At precisely 10:30 that morning, Chris had nervously sent an email to Darren with the addresses of his apartment and the restaurant he’s picked. He got back the cursory confirmation reply at 12:07 (with the damn smiley faces, as usual), leaving him pacing his living room at 5:56 and wiping his palms nervously across the denim on his thighs.

Brian’s judging him even more than usual, sitting on the back of the couch and swishing his tail, eyes steadily following Chris’s trek back and forth.

“Cut it out,” Chris hisses his way, flinching horribly when the doorbell rings.  Shit.

“Ohh, this is really happening,” Chris says to no one in particular, checking his hair one more time in the mirror and firmly silencing his phone as another “encouraging” text from Lea comes through ( _Smile a lot! Don’t be afraid to show those pearly whites!)_.

“Eat your _cat food_ , you hear me Bri?” he chastises one last time, dipping down to plant a firm kiss on his furry head despite the paw swipe, and finally sweeps out the door, locking it behind him with a thudding heart.

“H-hey,” Chris stutters nervously as he opens the door at the base of the long staircase from his second-story apartment, cutting off mid-sentence when he’s greeted not by Darren, but by an empty street.  Confused, he turns to lock that door, too, and-- Darren’s standing right in front of his gallery window.

Flushed with self-consciousness, now, Chris double-checks the ancient doorknob and pockets his keys, shoving his hands in too.

“I know the artist, you know.  I could totally get you in,” Chris jokes, breaking out into a real smile when Darren jerks back, looking embarrassed.

“Ah-- hah, sorry about that,” Darren mumbles sheepishly, using his elbow to wipe away the spot from his palm on the glass.  “I haven’t actually had a chance to see your gallery here yet.  I’m intrigued.”

“Then call me flattered,” Chris says, trying not to stare too long at how Darren looks now, jacket layered on over his t-shirt, deep red pants that fit exceptionally well and no glasses this time to hide the honest-to-god sparkle in his eye.

“Um, actually, I have the key if you’d like to walk around inside,” Chris offers, pulling the keyring out of his pocket to illustrate.  “That… sounded really conceited.”

“Someone with as much talent as you has a right to be conceited, I think,” Darren says, and Chris would try and correct him were it not for the bone-deep sincerity ringing through.  Instead, he lets the compliment warm him all the way down.

“After you,” Chris says softly, holding open the gallery’s front door to let Darren go in.

It’s not the first time he’s had his work criticized while he stood idly by, not even the first time Darren’s been the critic, but there’s something about this that feels so raw and formal.  Darren’s not even meeting his parents or his cat, but then again, seeing the paint and canvas that Chris poured his soul into for two years is a million times more personal than that.  Chris tries to reach back to the whirlwind night of his gallery opening, to remember if he’d seen Darren-- would he have been gussied up like he is for the LA art magazines, with the suits and the clean-shaven face?  Was Chris’s gallery opening before anyone knew the initials DC, would he have swept in dressed in loafers and ankle-bearing pants and not been given a second look?  Did he spend all night looking at the pieces, or did he try to talk to Chris, to no avail?  _Did_ he talk to Chris, and the memory is just blurred by too-many glasses of champagne?

No, Chris thinks, he would have remembered that face.

Darren looks at each piece for a long time, long enough that it can’t just be a courtesy.  Chris wonders if he should move closer, but Darren actually looks to be in deep thought, so Chris takes his lead and studies the pieces himself, wonders what Darren sees there.

He can remember the exact order he painted them in, for most of them he can remember what time of day he worked in and what music he listened to.  The inspiration for each, he remembers, can tell the story behind each title and the way the colors and strokes and layers invoke the emotion he was feeling.  It’s the _meaning_ of each one that feels foreign to him now.  Some of these were painted over two years before, and some within the past six months; some are entirely abstract, and others are recognizable landmarks from town; and Chris looks around at all of them curiously, tilting his head.  In his year of living in Cambria and his four years in LA before that, he’d never taken into account what someone else thought of his work, not once he started getting notoriety and teaching his own classes instead of being the pupil.  All those gallery nights and commissions and buyers and articles and never once has he cared what someone else had to say about his paintings.

But now, with Darren moving slowly through his little gallery with his hands on his hips and head cocked to the side, Chris wants to know everything.

“God, I could stay here all night,” Darren says behind him, and Chris turns to see him looking at a muted pastel scene of a huge, gnarled tree.

“Well that’s the last one,” Chris says, embarrassed and too-loud and jarring next to the quiet reverence in Darren’s voice, “and I’m afraid I wasn’t allowed to paint the walls, so. Not much else to see.”

Darren just laughs, smiles, and says, “I guess you have a point.  A totally misplaced and self-deprecating one, but valid nonetheless.  But if we’re ever going to get seated on a Friday night, we might want to--”

“Oh! Yes,” Chris says, following Darren’s gesture and flipping off lights on their way out the door.  “Well, I actually, uh, made reservations, so we should be okay.  The Black Cat is just a couple blocks over from here, if you’re okay with walking.”

Darren raises his eyebrows, says, “Yeah, sure,” and waits for Chris to lock the door to the gallery and lead the way, falling into step beside him.  The night is gorgeous, a real hint of summer in the damp, full air.

He has to practically drag Darren away from the store fronts to get to their reservation on time-- _“But Chris they have a whole store devoted just to knick-knacks made out of seashells!”_ \-- but they duck into the darkened, intimate dining area of the Black Cat Bistro in time.

“Hi, Leanna,” Chris greets the hostess, his friendly smile turning to a glare at her obvious interest in just who the man bobbing along behind him is.  “Colfer, party of two?”

“Of course, right this way,” she says suggestively, and Chris stares her down the entire winding walk to an empty two-person table in a smaller side room.

“James will be your server,” Leanna says as she pulls out both their chairs and offers to take Darren’s jacket, though he declines.  “You two have a wonderful meal,” she says sweetly to both of them, and then says just to Chris, “We simply _must_ catch up soon!  It seems we have a lot to talk about.”

 _“Thank you_ , Leanna,” Chris says curtly, cutting his eyes pointedly until she slinks away, hands up in what is no way an apology.

Darren isn’t paying a bit of attention, though, looking around at the small and very full dining room.  It’s Chris’s favorite restaurant in the whole town, off-the-beaten-path enough that tourists are scarce and big screaming families are nonexistent.  The converted house of a building makes it effortlessly comfortable and close, the cushy bench seats that line the walls and the candlelight--

“I realize, belatedly, that this is entirely too romantic for a business dinner,” Chris says, too-loud and totally mortified when he realizes the dining room is full of couples and not much else.  “But this is the quietest place with the best food and you have to eat here at least one time before you leave.”

Blinking slowly like coming out from deep thought, Darren waves a hand and edges closer, looking at Chris steadily.  “First of all, I don’t want to hear the word ‘business’ again, all night. Well, unless it comes after the word ‘risky,’ then it’s fine,” Darren amends, smiling again and making Chris smile too.  “Second of all, if everything on the menu is half as delicious-looking as whatever _that_ is--” he points emphatically at the pasta dish at the table next to theirs-- “then I have absolutely no complaints.”

“You’re something else, aren’t you?” Chris says, not at all sure what he even means, but James arrives with a wine bottle and a specials menu and he’s saved from trying to figure it out.

Right up until the second that their orders are placed and their menus taken away and their drinks all poured, Chris is sweating, terrified.  He hasn’t been on a real date since he left L.A., business or otherwise, Brian is by far the most attentive listener in his life, and there’s a reason he never picks up his phone when a call comes through.  Pair that with how successful and beautiful Darren is-- he’s fucked.

But just when he’s desperately taking a bigger-than-appropriate gulp of wine to buy himself time, Darren brings his feet up to sit crisscross on the bench seat, puts an elbow on the table, and starts to talk.

He talks about the room they’re sitting in, the town the room is in, and spirals out in concentric circles, talking about cities he’s visited and art he’s seen and people he’s met.  He talks about everything like it matters, uses his hands and pulls a pen out of his pocket to draw right on his own skin to illustrate his point.  Even if Chris hadn’t already seen his work, it would be easy to see why Darren is such a good artist-- he paints pictures just with his words, leaving Chris enlightened and almost confused in the wake of the way he sees things.  He never forgets his audience either, and clarifies things before Chris even opens his mouth, lets Chris interject and ask questions and makes him brave enough that when their food arrives, Chris is ready to talk about himself.

“I packed up and moved to L.A. two weeks into my first semester at Fresno State,” Chris says into his yellowfin tuna that’s paired with a dozen other things he can’t pronounce but are ridiculously good.  He looks up, but Darren’s just watching him attentively, poised with a piece of steak dangling off his fork.

“I, uh,” Chris says, laughing a little, “that summer after my senior year I submitted a bunch of pieces I did in my high school art classes, and a few I did on my own at home with my boxed acrylic set on scraps of cardboard and sheets of computer paper. I literally ripped pages out of my sketchbook and stuffed everything into a big envelope and mailed them to this contest they had at Otis College.  I didn’t even think about the fact that I wouldn’t get any of them back, I was just… desperate.”

He pauses to sip from his wineglass and Darren gestures eagerly. “So, you…?”

“I didn’t get the scholarship,” Chris laughs.  “Sorry to disappoint you.  But, one of the evaluators from their art department-- illegally, might I add-- kept my contact information and sent me a letter offering me a job at her teaching studio.  She could only pay me in part-time minimum wage, free lessons, and a spot on her couch, but I took it.  My parents weren’t thrilled, but they loaned me five hundred dollars, let me take the ‘98 Honda Accord, and wished me the best.  I kissed my sister on the forehead and left Clovis, California in my rearview mirror.”

Darren sits back slowly, a calculated, careful set to his mouth. Chris can tell he wants to ask more about his childhood home life, but the food is good and the wine is heady and he knows he’d crumble in a second under the pity in Darren’s eyes.  So he keeps talking.

“Anyways, I settled into Simple Strokes Studio where I wasted a lot of paint and canvas, called my sister every night and ended up crying to my mom on most calls, and one day, suddenly, found there were things I wanted to paint and share with the world.  I had a style.”

“An endlessly fascinating one,” Darren interrupts, and Chris scoffs.

“ _Anyways_ ,” he says again, can’t help but smile, “in-between working a day job at Barnes & Noble and wiping snot and color off kids at Kinderpaint classes, I landed space in a three-bedroom apartment with two roommates and took over the living room with my canvases.  An artist friend of mine had to back out of a job doing a mural for a local elementary school and recommended me instead, and after that job everything just kind of fell into place.  I moved up to teaching high schoolers, who I was only a couple years older than at this point, and then a gallery had an opening, and Angie somehow shoehorned me in for the spot.  And the rest is history, I guess.”

“Hold the fuck up,” Darren says, giddy with disbelief, “surely you don’t mean Angie Scott.”

Chris smiles.  “One and the same. She’s the one who did everything for me. I practically owe her my first born child.”

“You talented, lucky motherfucker,” Darren swears again, pushing away his near-empty plate.  “I knew I heard someone call you Cinderfella but I didn’t know _that_ was why.  You can’t be more than…”

“Twenty-three next month, actually,” Chris says, unable to keep from preening a little under Darren’s awe.  Not too long ago he’d brushed off praise because he couldn’t believe it, then brushed it off because if he didn’t he’d become an egotistical maniac, then brushed it off because it came with conditions and parameters.  But here, in his favorite restaurant in the first place he’s been able to really call home, the adulations are warmth he wants to turn towards, to bask in, to break open and grow stronger under its gentle touch.

He turns back to his barely-touched plate at Darren’s insistence, letting him take up the conversation slack.  “That’s infinitely more exciting and magical than my story.  I grew up in San Francisco, graduated high school, went to NYU after I applied to every art school within fifty miles of the city, graduated there, and moved back to San Fran to do set design for my old friend’s theatre troupe during the day and spend my nights painting enough canvases to fill my apartment, my third of a storefront gallery, and every spare inch of storage my parents so graciously spared me.”

James comes by to refill their wine glasses and take Darren’s plate.  He offers the dessert menu, and Darren’s eyes light up so infectiously that Chris could never say no.

“So what’s your fairytale story?” Chris asks when James leaves, propping his chin on a hand and pushing the last of his dinner around his plate.  “How does one go from free-spirit struggling San Franciscan artist to _L.A.’s Next Big Thing in Modern Art_?”

Darren seems a lot closer now, _is_ a lot closer with both elbows on the table and a hand scratching bashfully at the back of his head.  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far, and that magazine was definitely over-exaggerating, but thank you.  I guess after, god, seven years of working and painting and selling and doing any work I could get my hands on, I finally paid my dues.”

Finally, shoving his plate away, Chris can’t help but feel squeamish at the phrase.  He certainly didn’t pay any dues, not to the art world, moving from student to teacher to nobody to Somebody in a linear fashion so steep that the plummet to _has-been_ left him square on his ass.  There’s a lot to be said for someone who spent years perfecting and settling into their style and their methodology, and Darren’s living proof.  He’s spent his time struggling and being unsure and now he’s going to have years of relevance, while Chris did everything wrong and fizzled out before he even got going.

It’s hard to deal with, the bitterness, especially when he knows now that Darren was absolutely the wrong person to direct it towards.  If anything, Chris should be mad at himself.  It was always so easy to resent Darren for usurping him, but now it doesn’t feel like passing the crown down, it feels like the throne being restored from the hands of the amateur who was just pretending.

“I know you said not to talk about the b-word,” Chris starts, feeling like Darren has to understand this now, “but I just wanted to-- apologize for how cold I was before, towards you.  I’ve always been a little bit... distant, but I didn’t give you any slack, and I’m sorry.”

Darren nods seriously, and surprises Chris by reaching out to cover his hand with his broad palm.  “I get that it can’t be easy to be forced to work with someone who’s supposed to be competition, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  I don’t want it to be that way, not with us.”

Clearing his throat a little, Chris’s words trip over his heart that’s now pounding in his throat.  “Y-yes, okay,” he agrees, not sure he could say anything to the contrary under that steady, heavy gaze.  “It is for charity, after all.”

“Of course,” Darren says, pulling back and patting Chris’s hand once, smirking at something, though Chris doesn’t know what’s funny.  “All for charity.”

Dessert is a stack of what Darren makes James repeat twice are actually bacon shortbread cookies, and the best custard Chris has ever put in his mouth, warm silky chocolate and salted caramel sugar crust that Darren lets him do the honors of breaking.  He can’t do much more than shovel it into his mouth until Darren comments that Han Solo couldn’t have complained about being encased in salted caramel chocolate custard forever, and Chris almost swallows the spoon he had been licking clean.

“Star Wars, really?” he asks incredulously, and Darren immediately launches into a scholarly breakdown of the original trilogy versus the prequels.

Their dessert plates have been cleared for ages, but it’s not until they polish off their bottle of wine and James offers a second one that Chris finally realizes they’ve been there almost two hours and he should probably ask for their checks.

He brings them right in the middle of Darren’s story about his two years of painting nothing but scenes that didn’t make it into the Harry Potter movies and part of his mourning period of the end of the series, so Chris doesn’t even get to protest that the check is one tab, and not split.

“Oh-- sorry, here, I’ll just pay for my half,” Chris says hurriedly between bursts of laughter, grabbing for the folder even as Darren tucks his credit card into it and hands it off to a passing James.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Chris protests half-heartedly, but Darren just shakes his head. 

“I know I didn’t. I wanted to.  I asked you out, so I get to pay.”

James comes back with the receipt and winks at Chris, raising his eyebrows suggestively, and Chris just sticks his tongue out petulantly.  Honestly, wait staff these days.

Darren crowds around the receipt so Chris can’t see it, though he knows it’s not chump change.  Throwing up his hands to admit defeat, Chris jokes, “Why, Darren Criss, is this a _date?_ ” sitting back comfortably full and happy.

Darren considers him, lips pressed together like he’s just holding back a smile.  “Only if I get to kiss you good night at the end,” he says finally.

Chris splutters and turns red, closing his mouth without saying anything at all.

“Next time then,” Darren says easily, signing the receipt with a flourish.

*

The walk back to Chris’s apartment and gallery is quiet, the streets all lit up and the tourists quickly falling behind them as they cut across alleyways.  It’s nice, he thinks, accidentally bumping shoulders with Darren and returning his smile, watching Darren take in the muted elegance of downtown at night-- it’s nice to be companionably silent with someone, to let the lack of words be perfectly understandable to them both.

Chris takes out his keys as they approach his street corner, instinctively looking over the doors for anything suspicious, but all is well.  He unlocks the door that leads to his apartment staircase before he turns back to where Darren is waiting, hands in his pockets.

“You’re going to call a cab, right?” Chris double-checks, satisfied when Darren nods and holds up his phone.  “Thanks for a… surprisingly, really nice evening,” Chris says honestly, laughing a little to soften the rudeness he didn’t intend.

“I’m glad I can surprise you,” Darren teases back, stepping close enough that Chris can see the faint freckles that dot the apples of his cheeks, and he thinks again about what Darren had said at the restaurant, so casual about the idea of kissing Chris goodnight.

“Goodnight, Darren,” he says, too-fast and strangled, but still manages to smile as he disappears through the door.

“Goodnight,” is the echoing reply that comes, but Chris misses it as he runs up the stairs to something familiar that might make him feel a little less out of his skin.

*

Chris rolls over again, still unable to find sleep even as the clock ticks closer and closer to midnight.  Groaning in frustration, he sits up and takes his phone off the charger, knowing he won’t be able to sleep until he gets at least one thing off his mind.

_I really did have a good time. I honestly thought you were insane when you suggested it, but I think it’s actually going to help a lot._

_So uh, thanks._

He puts down the phone and snuggles back into bed, but not two minutes later, his phone chimes.

**do mine eyes deceive me? am I actually receiving texts from THE one and only Chris Colfer??**

_Oh, shut up._

**;)**

**no but yeah I had a great time too. thanks for indulging my crazy idea. hope this means you’ll be up to all my off-the-wall suggestions.**

_Well, we’ll see about that.  I’m guessing this means we can discuss the b-word again?_

**actually i had an email half written out to you but this is way faster. if you’re free tomorrow i’d like to start over as soon as possible.**

_Tomorrow’s perfect for me._

**good :) same place as last time? 9 am.**

_I’ll be there._

*

Chris wakes up to a chestful of cat and weak rays of a rising spring sun and staunchly doesn’t connect the lightness in his step to anything that might have happened the night before.

Ignoring the two texts and email from Lea begging for details, he feeds Brian chunks of his bacon and spends twice the time necessary on his hair and double-checks his ass in the mirror, stepping out with his sketchbook early enough to have to dodge morning traffic.

The barista is different than before, and this one doesn’t have much patience for his timid approach to java.  He ends up with some hazelnut concoction that tastes like sugary liquid ash, so he goes next door and begs the sweet lady who owns the deli to open her register to give him a Diet Coke.  She makes him pay with a kiss on the cheek instead.  A four-person table opens up right as Chris elbows his way back into the coffee shop, so he sits down, spreads out, and begins to draw.

He can’t remember the last time he sat down with a sketchpad and pencil and a lack of direction, can’t remember the last time he _wanted_ to.  It’s easy to tune out the bustle of the shop, to let the cacophony filter through his ears and right through to his fingertips.  Chris thinks about drawing the angry barista, a cute group of friends by the window, or even something he’s tucked away photographed in his mind, but when his pencil hits the page, it’s not what appears.

He's not one for any crowd of people, so he ignores the ones that he can see out of the corner of his eye pausing pointedly behind him, the whispers he can't quite tune out when he catches the words _drawing_ and _artist_ and, one person who must have seen his gallery earlier, excitedly telling everyone who he is.

"I'm really gonna have to make Roberto take down that headshot of me behind the counter," Chris mumbles to himself, smudging a line with his finger and blowing away the soft shards of graphite before they can smear where he doesn't want them.

"Headshot?"

Chris looks up, already knowing who that voice belongs to.  “Darren.”

"Good morning," Darren says brightly, throwing his bag into a chair opposite Chris. "I'm dying for caffeine, I think I actually might crumble into dust. You want a refill?"

Chris laughs, clarifying for Darren's confused face, "I actually, uh, don't drink coffee. Diet Coke is definitely my vice." He holds up his empty can, jiggling it for emphasis.

A slow smile breaks over Darren’s face.  “I don’t drink coffee either.  I just put my teabags into coffee cups and pretend.”

“I guess that means we both fail at being adult.”

“If loving chai is wrong, I don’t want to be right,” Darren says emphatically, tapping the table once and leaving Chris laughing as he goes back up to the counter to order.

Chris shakes his head a little bit, looking down at his drawing as a whole for the first time.  He tilts it, holds it at arm’s length, and scowls a little.  It’s not exactly what it looked like in his head-- the lines are looser, softer.  He quickly flips to a new blank page, smoothing his hand over the white space.  There was a reason he nearly always painted for assignments, for commissions, for profit and not for pleasure.

“What were you working on?” Darren asks when he comes back with a steaming cup, a stir stick, and sugar packets.

Chris can feel himself bristle, hunching protectively over his sketchbook.  “I was—just—”

“Hey,” Darren says kindly, pressing his crumpled packets into a ball, “you are totally not obligated to answer.  And you definitely don’t have to show me anything.”

He pulls the tea bag out of his drink and gets up to throw his trash away, smiling fleetingly before Chris can even think of a response.

“Maybe someday,” Chris says quietly, running his fingertips over his sketchbook again.

Darren launches right in as soon as he sits down.  “Now, I’ve been thinking a lot about the mural, and our two concepts.  I know when we put the two sketches next to each other it was like they clashed horribly but, and hear me out, I think they might work together better than we thought.”

Surprised, Chris raises his eyebrows even as his fingers are itching for his pencil.  “So you think… a geometric and a floral? Really?”

Darren smiles and leans in.  “It’s a rehab center, there’s no way around that.  I see what you were going for, the structure of the program, the rigidity of discipline it takes to overcome an addiction, yes?”

“Yes,” Chris agrees, beginning to understand what Darren means, “and yours was about the rebirth of completing the program, of new hope.”

“ _Yes,”_ Darren says excitedly, moving his hands.  “So I was thinking, both are important, both are interdependent—you can’t have one without the other.”

“The structure is the basis for the growth,” Chris adds, returning Darren’s infectious smile in spite of himself, letting the same excitement fill him up, too.  “They can—they _do_ exist together.”

“ _Exactly_. Exactly.”

He only tears himself away from Darren’s beaming smile to put his pencil to paper.

*

Showing the sketch plan to Cory is more of a formality than anything, it turns out, because he miraculously stays true to his word and doesn’t have a single criticism except—

“Is it gonna be colorful?”

Chris assures him that it will be, and Darren pulls out the three different color palettes they’ve been playing with and Cory’s face lights up right in front of their eyes.

“I love them.  Especially this one,” he comments, pointing to a fire-and-ice palette that had been their first idea.

“No more final decisions to make, then,” Darren declares, shuffling the other colored sketches back into his folder.  “I can have the paint estimations by the end of the day and we can start line art tomorrow.”

They both shake hands with Cory and Chris feels that old low-burning excitement settling in the pit of his stomach, the challenge now set to see a vision through to the end. 

*

Chris has always trusted Roberto to run the gallery all on his own, but he’s had to double his hours for the next six weeks to manage his time.

“You sure you’re fine with this?” Chris checks again, watching his face for signs of frustration with Chris’s very particularly organized phone log.

“Yes, Christopher, stop asking me that,” Roberto says, moving the phone log back to its place on the shelf.

“Stop calling me that,” Chris bickers right back, running a finger along the frames to check for dust.

“You don’t have to second-guess me, boss,” Roberto says, shuffling papers.  “Actually, you stopped micromanaging after my third week of working for you, so the real question here is what are you dying to talk to me about?”

“What makes you jump to _that_ conclusion?” Chris asks acidly, adjusting easels and stubbornly not admitting that he was right.

Roberto crosses his arms.  “I can’t take this for the rest of the afternoon. Out with it.”

Chris sighs, puts his hands on his hips and stares resolutely at the apothecary painting and not at Rob.  “I know you’ve heard from Dianna that Darren Criss and I are working on this mural for Cory.  And he just-- he took me to dinner.”

Rob whoops excitedly, but Chris puts up a hand.  “He took me out to dinner under pretense of improving our working relationship, and it actually went really well.  And then insinuated that he would like to kiss me good night.”

“And now you’re confused.”

Chris rolls his neck, considering.  “Not confused as much as conflicted.  I’m sure Darren would have kissed me if I had let him, and I don’t know how to feel about the fact that I almost did.”

Rob whistles.  “So, your hot coworker, who you are attracted to, got you to go to dinner with him and then pulled a move on you.  You’re not against this.  What’s the problem here?”

Chris glares.  “I could come up with a dozen problems, not the least of which being that he lives in San Francisco.  And dating a coworker is a bad idea.”

Shrugging, Roberto gets a rag to wipe down the sales counter.  “If you want my advice, I’m going to tell you to go for it.  You’d be stupid not to.  Otherwise, I can’t help you.”

Huffing, Chris runs a hand through his hair.  “Thanks for the advice, Rob,” he says sarcastically.

Roberto gives a little mock salute.  “Anytime, boss. Your secrets are safe with me.”

* 

Dianna lets them in the office before she leaves, sizing them both up before handing the key to Chris.  She ignores Darren’s indignant protests, saying, “The left side of the front doors— right side, when you’re coming in— is already locked from the outside only.  This key is just in case you guys need to leave and come back.  Put it on my desk, where I can see it, before you leave.  Cory only told me about the ladder, was there anything else you needed?”

“A ladder will be fine for now,” Chris says. “I assume you got the forward about the scaffolding being installed next week?”

“Already scheduled around it,” Dianna assures him, tucking her purse more firmly under her arm and pressing the key into his palm.  She touches Darren’s shoulder, then Chris’s, before she wishes them a goodnight.

She’s halfway out the door before she turns around, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear and saying, “You know, when we were renovating this place at all hours of the night, Cory and I were basically regulars at the 24-hour diner a block over.  I highly recommend it.”

“Bye, Dianna,” Darren says pointedly, and she laughs, wiggling her fingers and stepping out onto the street.

As soon as her car pulls away from the curb, Chris asks around a smile, “Something you’d like to share?”

“Nope,” Darren says cheerily, pulling a pencil from behind his ear (or out of his hair, Chris can’t really tell) and pointedly turning his focus towards the blank wall.

“Fair enough,” Chris allows, still smiling as he puts the key on Dianna’s desk for safe keeping and picks up the simple black and white, high-contrast sketch version they’re working from for gridding out the mural.  They managed to talk a local contracting company into priming the wall the two nights before, and Chris and his trick left shoulder are beyond grateful.  But now comes the important work-- the foundation for the mural itself.

Darren hands him a yardstick and they go to work, Darren starting low and Chris high, using the edge of the drywall as a starting point to map out a grid of square feet over the entire expanse of the primed wall.  It’s grueling, boring work, really, Chris’s least favorite part.  Making tick mark after tick mark is repetitive but extremely important, and mistakes are easy when he’s mind-numb.

Once he’s covered all of the wall in his reach, Chris clambers down from the ladder to move it over.  It’s hard to see the pencil marks, but Chris still huffs when he sees Darren has already stopped working, playing around with his phone.

“Break time already?” Chris comments irritably, slamming the ladder down harder than he strictly should.

“Nope,” Darren says again in the same tone, smiling widely as music starts playing from his phone’s speakers.  “Next time I’ll bring my dock, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”

He kneels back down without another word, picking up his yardstick again.  It isn’t long before he starts humming along and singing under his breath, and Chris is glad he’s eight feet above Darren’s head so Darren can’t see the smile he couldn’t hide if he tried.

It takes a good three hours, closer to four, even with them working together to cover twice the ground.  The wall seems even bigger like this, when they’re trying to break it down into small, workable pieces, and for the first time, Chris is a little nervous about the scope of the project and the tight deadline.

He nearly falls off the ladder when Darren breaks into the chorus of an upbeat pop song Chris has never heard before.

“Woah there,” Darren says, reaching out a hand to steady the leg of the ladder as he moves over.  “I get excited about Queen Bey too, but no reason to break an arm over it.”

Chris stretches as much as he can while balancing on a metal bar, shaking feeling back into his toes.  “You know walking under a ladder is seven years’ bad luck.  So crouching under one for hours is probably a curse upon your children’s children or something.”

Craning his neck, Darren says with mock offense, smile not quite hidden, “You really believe in superstition?  What’s next, you tell me you still leave out milk and cookies for Santa?”

“Of course I don’t.  Not without carrots for his reindeer too, of course,” Chris quips right back, jabbing his pencil in the direction of Darren’s head.

Darren’s laughter bounces off the wall just right to echo around the hard surfaces of the empty lobby, and this time, Chris lets him see his smile.

Slowly, surely, they conquer the wall that never seems to end.  The narrow piece of drywall above the windows is just at the edge of Chris’s reach, but he can’t bring himself to move that stupid ladder over one more time.

“Darren, will you step onto the other side?” he asks, watching to make sure Darren has all his weight on the bottom rung.

“What are you—” Darren starts, but Chris pays him no attention, twisting and arching as far as he dares, pencil outstretched to make the last tick mark.

“Yes!” he cheers under his breath, moving his weight back carefully and keeping his balance the whole time.  He hops down from the ladder with a flourish.  “ _Finally_ done.”

Darren steps down clumsily, eyes wide.

“Darren, are you okay?”

“Totally fine,” Darren says weakly, and Chris just raises his eyebrows.  And if there’s extra sway in his hips when he goes to get his Diet Coke, well, that’s just coincidence.

They agreed to get all the grueling work out of the way at once, so after a ten-minute break, Chris is ready to push through the night.  Chalk lining is usually a pain in the ass, but after one AM and with Darren at the other end of the string, Chris finds it’s probably the most fun he’s had in years.

Darren finds some Early 2000s station on his internet radio and turns his phone all the way up, stealing a piece of tape from Dianna to attach it to the ladder so that it’s as loud as it possibly could be.

“Alright!” he yells over the Backstreet Boys, Chris giggling from the early hour and the ridiculousness of Darren’s enthusiasm about this.  “Here’s the plan, first we go horizontal, and then vertical.  I’ll have to take the ladder when we get above my arm’s reach and you can use one of these.”  He drags a metal chair from the sitting area over to Chris’s side of the wall.

“Why do you get the ladder?” Chris teases, yelling too.

“Because not everyone was blessed with great heights, Legolas,” Darren says grandly. “Some of us are just lowly hobbits from the Shire.”

Chris scoffs, but Darren just hands him the free end of the chalk line.  “Ready?” he asks.

“Ready, go!” Chris replies, and Darren only hesitates a second before running to his side, stretching out the string until it’s taut.

“One, two, three!” Chris counts down, plucking the string so that it leaves a perfectly straight, temporary white line on the wall.  “Go, go!” he yells again, dropping his end so Darren can furiously wind it back into the box, running full-tilt at Darren with his hand out to grab the end of the string again as they switch sides.

It’s slower going as they have to climb up to reach the higher parts of the wall, but no less entertaining as Darren croons out every single song that comes up and even gets Chris to sing along once or twice.

By the time the wall is mapped out in a perfect grid, it’s almost four AM and Chris is nearly falling asleep standing up.

“That was actually so much fun,” Chris says around a yawn.  “You and your insane ideas.  You’re three for three, you know.”

“I know,” Darren says proudly, hammering in the last stud to hold the curtain that will hide their work-in-progress.  “One of these days you’ll stop being so surprised that they work out.”

“Mm,” Chris says skeptically, climbing down carefully when it feels like closing his eyes would put him to sleep instantly.  “We’ll see.”

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Darren agrees softly.  “Hey, do you want me to drive you home?  You look like you’re gonna pass out right here.”

Chris blinks and Darren is so close, one hand steady on Chris’s elbow.  “No, I can drive.  Just um—” he stops to yawn so hard his jaw cracks— “follow me home please? And let me know when you get back to your townhouse?”

“I can do that,” Darren says, and holds the door open until Chris makes sure everything is in order, all the lights are off, and he goes out first into the murky pre-dawn stillness.

*

“Wow Lea, that sounds amazing,” Chris says as genuinely as he can when he hasn’t listened to a word she’s said during the whole phone call.  He woke up to the shrill ring of a third consecutive chime of his ringtone, and his groggy mind thought actually answering would make the noise stop.  Oh, how naïve his sleep-self is.

 _“Are you okay?”_ she asks, and Chris has to pull the phone away from his ear as she gasps. _“Chris Colfer, are you hungover?! It is a Tuesday!”_

“Ugh, _no_. Honestly, do you know me at all?”  Chris finally forces himself to get up, shuffling into the living room to lay across the couch instead.  “No, it’s just, last night was the fifth night in a row Darren and I have been working on the line art for the mural and it’s just taking longer than I had expected.”

_“Oh how I love the sound of ‘Darren and I.’ How **is** that handsome artist doing?”_

“Probably not feeling run over a truck like me. He never runs out of energy.  But luckily, tonight is an off night, so I’m hoping I can actually get sleep at normal nighttime hours since I’m going to be woken up at the crack of dawn by Brian regardless.”

Lea sighs dramatically and Chris winces, finally putting her on speaker and balancing the phone on his chest.

_“Oh, Christopher, Christopher, Christopher.  Have you guys gone to dinner again?  You know the first one was very promising, even Jon thought so.”_

“I will ignore the fact that you told details of my personal life to people I have never met, only so that this conversation can end and I can go back to bed.  That dinner was not a date, Darren and I are not dating, and no amount of wishful thinking or meddling on your part is going to make it happen, okay?”

 _“Ookay,”_ Lea sing-songs, _“we’ll see about that.”_

“Goodbye Lea,” Chris says firmly, echoing back her sentiments of love so he can hang up.

The couch feels so comfortable when he finally relaxes into it, sunlight nice and muted behind the dark curtains of the living room.  His eyelids droop without his permission, tired mind on a restless loop, no doubt a result of having to put up with Lea so soon after waking.  But despite what he said to her, despite what he knows and believes about working relationships, all he can think about is Darren’s shoulder pressed into his, both of them close to tears with delirium at five AM and the line art finally, finally done, and his eyes so close he could count every eyelash, his mouth so pretty, lips parted—

Chris wakes up three hours later with a crick in his neck and mortified at the fact that he’s painfully hard in his pajama pants.

Rolling off the couch carefully, he ignores Brian’s pitiful attention-seeking meows and turns his shower all the way to cold.

*

Chris gets to StraightforwarD early on the first night of block painting, dragging a full cooler of Diet Coke behind him.  He was hoping to get there before Darren and start arranging brushes and paint and be already immersed in work so that he wouldn’t be tempted to objectify his co-worker every time he saw him but-- no such luck.

“Hey guys,” Chris says as casually as he can, forcing his cooler over the threshold awkwardly.

Darren jumps back from where he had been leaning on Dianna’s desk like Chris caught him doing something wrong.  “Chris! Chris. Hey.”

“Hey,” Chris says again, a little breathless, clutching the handle of his rolling cooler in one hand and his car keys in the other.  “I’m sorry, I thought I was going to be early, I... am I not? Early?”

“You are!” Darren says quickly, “Dianna and I were just talking.  She and I both grew up in the Bay area, so.”

“Oh,” Chris replies, not sure what else to say.

“I’ll see you boys later,” Dianna cuts through the uncertainty, melting it away as soon as it appeared.  She kisses them both on the cheek, leaving Chris with a meaningful smile that leaves him more confused than ever.

The silence after the door closes seems to ring in Chris’s ears, the first one that’s felt awkward between them.  Darren clears his throat a little, gestures to the scaffolding.  “Shall we?”

It’s better once Darren gets the music playing, Chris more relaxed when he doesn’t have to talk, just preparing paint and brushes methodically, looking over the layered paint plan and estimating how far they can get in one night.

“I’ll start over on the left with the first big dark gray section, and maybe you can do the darker yellow near the center?” Darren asks, close and soft to be heard over the music instead of yelling, and Chris nods, taking the cup of paint and brush he hands him.

Darren climbs up on the scaffolding first, offering a hand to help Chris up, too, when he pauses.

“Wait… let me pick the music now?” Chris asks, already paused with one hand over the speakers before Darren can curiously agree.

“As much as I dig your moody pop-rock,” Chris teases, exchanging Darren’s phone for his own, “we need something with a _beat.”_

“ _Alternative_ rock,” Darren insists, taking the brushes and paint as Chris hands them up, then offering a hand to pull Chris securely onto the platform.

He stops, squinting like he’s listening hard.  “Is this…? I know this song,” Darren says slowly.

“If you don’t know the Scissor Sisters, don’t you dare tell me.”  Chris brandishes his paintbrush threateningly and turns to the wall without another word.

Darren moves to the other end of the scaffolding with his hands raised in surrender, but when Chris chances a look he’s bopping his head with the music.

With a brush in hand, his mind calms and his heart rate slows and Chris slips happily into the trance of steady technique.  Even just this, just cleanly outlining the pencil marks they spent so long getting right, is methodical and familiar and easy, feels like an extension of himself.

Darren appears at his shoulder, raising the can of dark yellow paint in silent question and, at Chris’s nod, pouring it cleanly to refill his cup.

“Thanks,” Chris says, loud enough that Darren can hear.

It takes the better part of three hours to edge and roll the three base colors onto both halves of the wall, Chris not letting on how secretly pleased he is at Darren’s appreciation of the way he’s more than capable of picking up his half of the scaffolding to move it to the other side of the hallway.

Chris puts down his paint roller and steps back to join Darren, who’s already standing with his arms crossed, considering.

“It looks good,” Chris says, wiping his paint-covered thumb onto his already ruined shirt.

“It really does,” Darren agrees, bending down to gather up brushes to be cleaned.  “I’m glad we took the time to redraw what we messed up.”

“What _you_ messed up,” Chris snarks, probably bordering on unkind, but Darren just laughs and allows it, saying, “Okay, what I messed up.  Luckily, the best artist on the West Coast was there to clean up my mess.”

Chris laughs brashly, covering his mouth with one hand.  “I think all these weird hours are getting to you.”

“Whatever,” Darren says, putting brushes away to dry and tossing Chris the screwdriver to put the lids back on the paint.

They’re almost ready to call it a night when Chris remembers the curtain.  “Ooh… we may have a problem.”  He holds up the red fabric.

“Damn,” Darren swears, “I don’t want to chance that ruining our base coat.”

“Me either,” Chris agrees, letting it fall to the floor.  “So one of us is gonna have to come back here and hang it up again before they open in the morning.”

“We could do that,” Darren says slowly, “or, we could stay up until it dries.  You know, we never did try that diner.”

Chris is taken aback.  His first instinct is to talk his way out of it.  “But we’re not remotely dressed to go into public.  I didn’t bring any other clothes.”

Darren laughs.  “I’m sure they’ve seen a lot worse than a couple of paint-covered artists after 2 AM, Chris.”

Panicking a little, Chris tries again. “I really don’t mind getting up early.  My cat gets me up with the sun anyways, it’s fine, I know you don’t—”

“Chris,” Darren interrupts him, “I want to.  Please?”

“Okay,” Chris whispers, powerless under Darren’s wide, pleading eyes and pushed-out bottom lip.

Darren smiles and cheers, grabbing the key from Dianna’s desk.

*

The diner is small and only one other table is occupied, a pair of tired-looking travelers scouring over an iPad.

It’s not until Darren orders a burger platter that Chris decides on chili-cheese fries and a large vanilla shake.  Darren adds a cookies and cream milkshake before the waitress walks away.  Chris raises his eyebrows at him.  “What? Dinner was a long time ago,” Darren defends himself. 

Chris manages a smile, feeling more than a little vulnerable like this, sitting in a too-bright diner after midnight in his ratty painting jeans, exhausted and without sketch pads or candlesticks or pretense between them.

“I can see why you decided to move here,” Darren says, putting his wristwatch back on where it had been jammed in his pocket.  “There’s just something special about Cambria.  Almost… magical.”

Chris’s breath hitches as he’s caught in steady eye contact with Darren.  “If you would have asked fourteen-year-old Chris if he would end up in a town just as small as the one he was suffering in, he would have laughed in your face.  But my very narrow worldview was thankfully, also very inaccurate.”

“I am eternally grateful that my life didn’t turn out exactly how my fourteen-year-old self expected it to,” Darren agrees, laughing.  “There would be a lot more riding around in a VW van and a lot less clothes.”

“I don’t even need to ask, do I?”  It’s not exactly a stretch to imagine Darren as a full-out hippie or god, even a nudist.

“My nickname in high school and college was Daisy,” Darren admits.  “I totally loved it.”

“It suits you,” Chris says, falling silent when the waitress comes back with their milkshakes.

“This is the best milkshake I’ve ever had,” Darren gushes, downing half of it in two gulps.

“Mm,” Chris agrees, laughing into his straw.  Darren is like a little kid, complete with milk mustache.  Chris has a sneaking suspicion he’ll be just as hyperactive after a milkshake as a kid would be, too.

Darren flicks his straw wrapper at Chris, who decides that two can play at that game.  He has Darren’s all too rapt attention as he eats his cherry whole, spitting the stem out with a perfect knot and enjoying the slackness in Darren’s jaw.

Their food is delicious in the way that all greasy food is after midnight, cheesy and salty and the perfect counterpoint to the sweet and cold milkshake.  It’s a cliché kind of date Chris never got to have, he realizes as he’s halfway over the table to use his thumb to wipe ketchup off the corner of Darren’s mouth.  Romantic date, friend date, even just an impromptu craving in the middle of the night— these are the types of outings people have dozens of, that seem like nothing at the time but mean so much.  It means a lot now, wiping his thumb off on the napkin in his lap and thrilling at Darren’s warm, secretive smile.

“You know,” Darren says, like he’s continuing a conversation they’ve been having this whole time, “the beach, the parks, the shops—it’s all pretty awesome, but I have to say, the people of Cambria are the best thing I’ve found here.”

Chris looks down at his nearly-cleared plate, heart pounding and blood rushing to his cheeks.  There’s no way in hell Darren means him, but just the idea that he does makes Chris squirm from the inside out.  He nods, and the words don’t even feel bitter when he says, “I’ve known Dianna for a while, she and Roberto are good friends.  She’s wonderful.  You two deserve each other.”

Since he saw that Darren had gotten to the StraightforwarD offices early just to lean over Dianna’s desk, everything made sense.  Chris was just lucky that Darren cared enough to still try to be his friend when he had been so standoffish at first, and that’s all he was ever going to be.  It didn’t even hurt, because Chris had been protecting his heart the whole time.  It didn’t hurt, because Chris never gets the guy, so there weren’t any hopes to be dashed.  It didn’t—

“Chris, I’m not interested in Dianna.”  Chris looks up sharply, doesn’t move a muscle.  Darren’s eyes are so serious Chris can feel it in his bones.  “I mean yeah, she’s great, but she’s not the person I’ll be thinking of when something finally tears me away from Cambria and I’m left wishing to god I had stayed longer.”

“I… I’ll have you know,” Chris stutters, hope pouring fast and thick and dangerous through his veins, “that I have personal guidelines against dating coworkers.”

Darren’s smile only flickers for a second, then grows confident and cocky and sure, and he says, “That’s okay.  Six weeks is nothing.”

Chris smiles slowly, ducking down quickly to eat the last of his fries.

*

The walk back to the offices is short, but Chris thrills every time that Darren’s shoulder brushes his, walks as close as he dares so that it will happen again and again.

They check the mural for damp spots and, finding none, work together to move the scaffolding back into place and hang the curtain again.

Darren basically jumps right off the platform, putting out a hand for Chris to unnecessarily steady himself as he climbs down the side, which Chris takes regardless.  He smiles back at Darren for a long moment before he drops his hand, moving to gather his stuff up to leave.

Chris is really feeling the late hour, stumbling a little when he tries to yawn and walk.  “Woah there,” Darren says softly, and Chris curves happily into the steadying hand on his back.

It’s unspoken agreement by now that Darren will follow Chris back to his apartment and text him when he gets home, and half the time he shuts Chris’s car door for him.  This time Darren walks him all the way to the car, makes sure he gets his shoulder bag stowed away.

“Chris,” Darren calls as he shuts the passenger side door.  When Chris turns they’re only a couple of feet apart.

“I’m sorry,” he continues, eyebrows knit together in worry, “I’m really, so sorry if I said something earlier that was too forward. That wasn’t what I meant.”

“No,” Chris says, blinking in surprise and feeling much more awake.  “I didn’t think you were forward at all.”

“And I’m sorry about Dianna, I wasn’t trying to betray your trust.  I knew she was your friend and I just wanted some advice from her on—” Darren cuts himself off, breathing hard.

“On what?” Chris asks, hope pumping strong again, leaving him rooted to the spot.

“On how to tell you that I think about you all the time,” Darren says plainly, entire body open and pitched forward and so beautiful, covered in paint.  Chris thinks for a second that he’s going to pass out. 

Darren keeps talking.  “To tell you that I admired your art so much, and then as I got to know you I realized that it’s you that I’m fascinated by, it’s you that I want to study for hours.  That I can’t paint a single thing because I’ve never had feelings like this, that I wanted to keep inside instead of showing to the world.  But I want to show them to you.  And god I just want to kiss you like, constantly—”

“I want you to,” Chris says faintly, completely stunned but quickly regaining autonomy, and there’s only one thing he wants so badly that his chest is aching.

“You what?” Darren asks, something bright and joyful dawning on his face.

“I want you to kiss me,” Chris says strongly, eyes already fluttering closed.

Then there’s a warm hand cupping his jaw and with only a gentle exhale as a warning, lips on his.  Chris’s body reacts instantly, warmth bursting in the pit of his stomach and flowing out to the tingling tips of his fingers.  He flexes his hands and presses closer, responding eagerly and kissing so hard that his nose smushes right into Darren’s cheek.  It’s over too soon, Darren pulling back carefully and Chris furrowing his brow as their lips part with a tiny sound.

“Darren?” he asks, though he hasn’t gone more than six inches, and the answering noise in the back of Darren’s throat is all the permission he needs before he steps closer and puts one hand on Darren’s shoulder and tangles the other in his curly hair.

A sharp inhale makes Chris’s head spin and he’s not even sure who it came from.  An arm presses across his lower back, fingers dig deliciously into his hip, and he melts in to fit the shape of Darren’s body.  Every tiny movement of Darren’s lips feels like it’s pulling his very existence from the soles of his shoes, Chris just clinging on tight and trying to keep up.  He kisses back in earnest, hardly caring if he’s sloppy or if he’s pulling the hairs on Darren’s head right out of their follicles.

It’s Darren that pulls back first, just an inch or two to pant right over Chris’s lips.  “Oh my god, Chris,” he groans, dipping back in to kiss Chris again just as hungrily, pushing closer when Chris whines in response.

“We have to— go, sleep,” Chris says more firm in resolve than he feels, practically pulling Darren off him by his hair.  “It’s after 4 o’clock.”

“Right, sleep,” Darren echoes, stealing another kiss even as Chris is laughing at him.

“Sleep,” he says, stronger now, pleased and grinning at how red Darren’s lips are, how starry-eyed he looks.  “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow,” Darren says, clearing his throat and tugging on his t-shirt.  “Let me take you to lunch?”

Chris hums, tracing over Darren’s bottom lip with his thumb just because it feels like he can, now.  “Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll take _you_ to lunch.”

“Excellent,” Darren says, walking him to the drivers’ side door and kissing his cheek so that he’ll actually start the car.

“Good night,” Chris says before Darren closes the door, holding his hand out for one last touch.

“Good night,” Darren returns, taking Chris’s hand in both of his for a second,\ before closing his door and leaving his smile behind.

*

Chris blinks awake at just after nine, groaning and pulling the pillow back over his head.  He nuzzles back down into the mattress for only a second before his mind catches up with his body and he jolts fully awake, flinging off the sheets.

“Oh my god, last night happened,” Chris says faintly, fingertips tracing his lips, a phantom imitation of Darren’s touch.

He checks his phone, ignoring Lea’s texts and wondering if he should see if Darren is awake, if their lunch date is still on.  The thought of a date with Darren, just a date, no qualifiers or excuses attached, is electric enough to have Chris out of bed, itching to move.

He gives himself a pep talk in the shower, scrubbing off paint he missed in his half-asleep hand-washing the night before and being as realistic as possible.  …Until he remembers Darren’s little speech out on the sidewalk and gets butterflies all in his stomach again.

“I’m being totally ridiculous, Bri,” he says, leaning down to scratch down his spine as he winds around his ankles, meowing for breakfast.

He lowers his expectations as far as the happy little light in the pit of his stomach will let him and checks his phone, but the _good morning :) xx_ waiting for him can’t help but make him grin and stretch back out on the bed, buzzing with happiness.  Maybe he is being ridiculous, but he can’t find it in himself to feel bad about it just yet.

*

Darren convinces him to drive out to the beach for lunch, and when Chris hears how excited Darren is, he has to agree.  He invites Chris to a seaside shack that Chris has never heard of, but is easy to find, bright orange paint against all the blue and white of the beach.

He parks next to Darren’s old Subaru, Darren already out and leaning against his driver’s side door.  Chris barely locks his doors before he has an armful of warm, solid Darren.

“Oh,” he says quietly, body that had reflexively tensed now relaxing with the slide of wide palms on his back and the softness of curls on his cheek.  He lets his arms fall around Darren’s shoulders, not quite sure how to respond.

It doesn’t seem to deter Darren, though, who steps back with a radiant smile and takes Chris’s hands instead.  “Hi.”

“Hi,” Chris echoes, squeaking a little when Darren presses a kiss to his right cheek.

“Too much?” Darren asks worriedly, and Chris melts instantly, wants to smooth away the crease between his eyebrows.

“No, no, not at all,” he insists, squeezing Darren’s hands.  “It’s just, been a while. I guess.”

Which is not a complete lie.  Chris doesn’t even want to try and calculate how long it’s been since he went on a date, let alone with someone as interesting and handsome and _nice_ as Darren.  Mostly, though, he’s scared of doing or saying the wrong thing, and in the afternoon glare off the ocean he’s much too aware of his actions.  There’s been more than one man who’s walked away from him with only vague apologies, and one that was blunt enough to tell Chris to his face that he was the problem, his moods and his weird habits and his being unreachable for hours.

But Darren hugs him with abandon, holds open doors, pulls out chairs, and shrugs and answers _I want to_ when asked why.  Darren seems so genuinely interested in what Chris has to say, even if it’s just Brian’s sleeping habits or something he read last week.  Chris likes Darren, probably a reckless amount.

The fish tacos are the best Chris has ever had, as Darren promised.  He drinks three glasses of Diet Coke (which he’s privately thrilled Darren doesn’t comment on), and then only needs a little goading to take a walk down the beach.

The sand is blindingly white, and Chris wishes he had gotten his sunglasses out of his car when they stopped to take off their shoes—that is, until he notices how luminescent golden Darren’s eyes are in the sunshine, and he’d never want those to be hidden.

Chris doesn’t cross his arms even though he feels a lot like the bleached driftwood that dots the sand.  They barely make it to the water’s edge when Darren asks, almost shy, “Could I have the honor of holding your hand?”

“So gallant,” Chris replies, taking Darren’s left hand in his as they fall into step parallel to the crashing waves.  He returns Darren’s happy smile, adding, “You don’t have to ask that.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that actually,” Darren says, putting a little distance between them so he can look Chris in the eye.  “Last night was… more than I hoped for.  And definitely not planned.  You know, you’re pretty fucking surprising.”

“’Tis a game for two,” Chris says, shrugging.

Darren knocks his shoulder lightly.  “I stayed up all night replaying it in my head.  I don’t even think I’ve slept an hour or two.”

“Darren, please.”

“It’s true!” he defends himself.  “You can ask my neighbors, I was jumping on my bed when I got home.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Chris insists, shaking his head.  But he’s smiling, and Darren knows it.

“Fine, don’t believe me.” He squeezes Chris’s hand.  “But I’m telling you that I’m very, very happy about it and I wanted to know how you feel about it happening again.”

“Kissing?” Chris teases, feeling bold in the glow of Darren’s confession and tugging him close into his side, bumping his forehead to the corner of his eye, right where his cheek is scrunched up with his smile.  “I am totally on board with more kissing.”

“Mm, kissing is good,” Darren agrees, stopping and pulling Chris in so that the waves lap right over their bare feet.  “And I do want kisses.  But I also want to take you on dates, and get to know you better.  And paint you.”

“You want to paint me?” Chris repeats, more incredulous of that than anything.  Chris has never drawn or painted a single person he knew personally, all too aware of the criticism that would go along with it.

“Yes, I do.  I want _you_ to want those things too, Chris.”  He rests a hand on Chris’s chest, thumb tracing the outline of his collarbone through his t-shirt, and Chris wonders if he can feel the pounding heart not far below his palm.

“And we can take this as slow as you’re comfortable with,” Darren promises, talking faster now.  Chris just smiles.  “I can just be the person you’re dating, that’s fine, as long as I’m the only one.  Or boyfriend is good, I’m quite fond of the word, if you are too, of course, I… Hey now, why are you laughing?”

Chris giggles into the palm of his hand until Darren’s pout is too tempting and he has to lean down to kiss it away.  It’s even better than he remembers, lips soft and easy with wind in his hair and sand in his toes.

“I like you a lot, Darren,” he says quietly as they part.

“I like you too, Chris Colfer. A lot a lot.” Darren laces their fingers tightly together as they head back up the beach to their cars.

*

Chris goes back to his apartment so he can nap before they have to go to StraightforwarD for the night, but he ends up lying in bed in his darkened room texting Darren for the rest of the afternoon instead.

_Have you told Dianna yet?_

**You know what, I actually haven’t told anyone.  It still kind of feels like a dream.**

Even in his bedroom alone, Chris blushes, squirming happily.  He takes a deep breath before typing out what’s been on his mind since he drove away earlier.

_What if we didn’t tell anyone?_

_Just for a little while,_ he adds quickly. _It would be really nice if this could be just ours for now.  We could tell everyone at the mural unveiling?_

**Although I did have a down payment on a skywriter, you do have a point.**

_A skywriter, Darren really._

**No easier way to get the word out.**

**Dianna would probably be insufferable.**

_And I KNOW Lea would be._

**Plus, sneaking around is fun, right?**

_I think doing anything with you would be fun._

**Chriiiis I’m blushing!**

_And you can take that statement as you will._

**….Chris.**

_But really, you’re okay with laying low for a little while?_

**I am totally fine with playing coy for the next few weeks in exchange for peace and quiet from our well-meaning but heavy-handed friends, yes.**

_Wonderful.  You’re wonderful.  See you tonight?_

**Of course. Xo**


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as Chris wakes up he knows something is wrong.  His beautiful dream of Darren’s lips and hands slips away abruptly, an echo of how they parted the night before.  There’s some sound that won’t stop, but it’s not Brian and it’s not his alarm…

Chris sits straight up, fumbling for a weapon.  There’s someone in his apartment.

All he can find that’s remotely threatening are his sai swords, remnants from the bored, bullied high schooler he’d been in a summer long ago.  They’re still pretty sharp, but he’d have to be really close to do any damage.  He tries not to think about that, wincing as his bedroom door creaks loudly.

“Brian?” he hisses, holding his swords in front of him and slipping through the crack in his door on light feet.  There’s no sign of his cat, but there is the voice from the general kitchen area, someone that keeps talking and _talking_ and--

“Lea, holy _shit_ ,” Chris exclaims, and she turns around and shrieks when she sees him, hoisting Brian higher to hide her face.  His yellow eyes are huge and bewildered.

“Chris! Oh my god were you going to _attack_ me?”

“I thought you were some kind of intruder, god Lea, I think you just took a year off my life.”

“I’m sorry!” she says, finally letting Brian jump down. “I knocked and called you but you didn’t answer, and Roberto unlocked the door and told me to go wake you up, that you probably just got in late…”

Chris heats up all over when he remembers just why he was late last night, even later than usual.  Roberto’s never met Lea before, and Chris can only imagine how suggestive he was when he said it.

“I did get in late, as late as anyone who’s working nightly to finish a mural would get in.  But Lea-- what are you _doing_ here?”

Her face immediately falls, and Chris feels like shit.  “I just-- meant--”

“You weren’t listening, were you?  When we were talking on Tuesday and I said that I was thinking about driving up to see you.  You were just saying yes so that you could hang up and pine over Darren some more.”

“No Lea, no,” he lies as smoothly as he can, thinking quickly, “of course I heard you. You must not have gotten my text that said to meet me at--” he sneaks a glance at the oven clock-- “10:30 at the diner a couple blocks over.  See, you’re a whole half-hour early and at my _apartment_ instead.”

“Oh,” she says, smile coming back, “I’m sorry.  I must have lost service on the way here.  I really could go for an egg-white omelette.”

“Perfect!” Chris says enthusiastically, leaning in to kiss her cheek.  “Let me jump in the shower, like I was headed to do, and you can feed Brian for me.  If you give him a treat or two, he’ll be your best friend.”

He nudges the treat can towards Lea and picks up his sais from the counter, moving back to his room as casually as he can.

His good morning text is already there waiting when he picks up his phone frantically.

_Yeah, what a morning. Lea’s here._

**What???**

_Apparently I agreed to her visit when I thought I was just ignoring a long-winded retelling of a cast prank._

**What are you going to do?**

_Entertain her, what else can I do?_

**Are you going to tell her about us?**

_No, god no. She’ll be insufferable.  I have to LIVE with her for two days, I can’t._

**Fine with me. Okay. Let me know what I can do to help.**

*

Brunch and a walking tour of downtown charms Lea and gives Chris plenty to say outside of his recent coworker developments, but when Chris tries to steer them past StraightforwarD without her seeing, she thwarts his plans.

“Chris! Isn’t that the place you’re painting your mural?”

Chris winces, face turned away from where her hand tucked into his elbow is pulling towards the very familiar glass doors.  Apparently Lea had been listening to _him_.  “Oh… yeah, that’s the place.  We can’t see it now, though, they close at noon on Saturdays.  Besides, it’s only a little under half-way finished, and they have us cover it up during the day.”

“That’s okay!” she says brightly, that fearless optimism he’s been wary of since it lead to an incredibly awkward date with her makeup artist friend. “There’s a car parked here out front, so maybe we can just knock on the door?”

“I don’t know,” Chris says reluctantly, knowing he’s going to give in to her pout.  “I guess we can try.”

“Yay!” she cheers, breaking away from him to rap smartly on the glass front doors.  She tugs on the handle, and it gives way.  “Chris look, it’s unlocked!”

 _“Lea,”_ he hisses, this time in warning.  “We can’t just _walk in_ , I don’t even know who’s here! What if they shoot us?”

She rolls her eyes, still smiling, and opens the door. “Chris, please. This isn’t Texas, no one is going to shoot us. I’m sure whoever is here working extra hours on a Saturday is someone who knows who is here every night painting a mural with no supervision. Now come on, drama queen.”

Chris scoffs, watching the swish of her hair as she steps inside the office.  Exasperated, he reluctantly follows, knowing he surely can’t leave her in there alone.

He blinks to adjust to the darkness of the lobby, squinting at the change of light.  “Lea?”

“I’m right here,” she says nearly in his ear, touching his elbow.  “This place is beautiful.”

“Yeah, they just renovated it,” Chris tells her, finally blinking away the afterimage of the sun.  Their voices echo just enough in the lobby that Chris is unsettled, still prickling with apprehension about walking in when they shouldn’t be.  Dianna’s desk is vacant, rolling chair pushed in neatly.

He thinks he sees a light coming from down the hall of the offices, and Chris calls Cory’s name.  No answer.

“Okay, let me just show you what it looks like so far and then we can leave,” he says, nervous at the lack of response.

“Alright, alright, worry wort,” Lea teases, already tugging at the corner of the curtain strung up over the unfinished mural.

“Here,” Chris says, climbing up the scaffolding to tug the curtain off the nail. He bunches the curtain up between his hands, sweeping it aside as he moves across.

“Ooh,” Lea says emphatically, raising a hand as if to touch it.

It’s only halfway layered with color and most sections are still blobby, just vague splotches of color.  But there are parts where it’s clear what will become a leaf, or a hexagon, and the shades already play off each other beautifully.

“It’ll look like that in about three more weeks,” Chris adds, pointing at the finished product sketch taped where the curtain will fall over it, too.

“That’s so--” Lea starts, cutting off with a shriek and staring wide-eyed at something behind Chris.

He turns tensely, but sighs in relief when it’s just Cory.

“Mr. Monteith, I’m so sorry.  Lea just-- and I called your name and I--”

“It’s Cory, Chris, don’t be silly,” he says easily, jingling the car keys in his left hand.  “I was answering emails and doing paperwork, I guess I didn’t hear.  It’s okay.”

Chris nods, nerves still frazzled but reassured as he twists the curtain between his fingers.  He opens his mouth to say something to Lea about leaving when Cory takes two long strides towards her, already holding out his hand.

“You must be the friend I’ve heard so much about from Chris.  I’m Cory Monteith, it’s wonderful to meet you.”

“Lea Sarfati,” she says, then corrects herself, flustered, “Lea _Michele_ , I mean. Still getting used to the stage name.”

“An actress, huh?” Cory asks.

Chris hangs the curtain back as silently as he can, watching the two of them out of the corner of his eye.  Even through her long story full of people Cory has never heard of and will never meet, he’s captivated, smiling and laughing and never once looking away from her face.

Maybe he and Darren don’t have much to worry about after all.

*

He does his best to keep Lea entertained even when that means she doesn’t leave his side all weekend.  He already told her that Darren was out of town for the weekend so he can’t even say they have to work on the mural and escape for a few hours.  It’s not a lie, either-- Darren has already texted him a half-dozen pictures of the skyline with the Golden Gate Bridge.  He’s been keeping Darren updated on Lea’s presence, saving the story with Cory to tell him in person, but Darren’s been busy with family and business and Chris wants him back already.

He wakes up on Sunday to Lea’s brisk walk through his apartment, scales trilling from her throat and a neatly-packed suitcase next to him on the floor (Chris had, of course, given her the bed while he took the couch).

“Going back so soon?” he slurs, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and reaching down to scratch Brian where he’s sitting in the lid of Lea’s luggage.

“My spa appointment this afternoon simply couldn’t be changed!” she says brightly, pulling her strange assortment of organic teas and lactose-free milk out of the fridge and packing them back into an insulated bag.  “It was the only one they had for weeks.”

“Okay,” Chris says, fighting to sit up and stretch in the tangle of blankets he’s created. “Breakfast then?”

Lea kneels to shoo Brian away and zip up her luggage and looks… totally bashful.  “Actually, I kind of already have breakfast plans.”

“Well.”  Chris watches her smile.  He asks but feels like he already knows, “Cory?”

“Yes,” she breathes, pulling the handle up.

“Here, let me help--” Chris starts, finally throwing the covers off to take her bag.  He ends up wrestling his way down the narrow stairs, but everything makes it securely into her trunk.

“Thank you my dear,” Lea says, tugging him down by the elbow to reach his cheek.  “I’ll let you know when I get back to LA, okay?”

“Be careful,” Chris says sincerely, “and have fun.”

“I will,” Lea smiles, patting him on the elbow one last time.  “I really like Cambria, Chris. I’m glad you found a home here. I might have to come back to visit sometime.”

Chris laughs, too-loud for the quiet morning street, and says, “Oh, I’m sure it’s not me that you’ll be visiting.”

He gets nothing but a coy smile in return and a wave out the window as she drives away.

It’s still a little cool in the mid-morning hours, and Chris locks his doors soundly as he goes back into his apartment.  Of course, Lea left some kind of face cream on the tiny bathroom counter, her coffee cup unrinsed in the sink, and her hair in the shower drain, but Chris just shakes his head.  Brian is still ruffled, slinking around the edges of the living room and watching the door like she might come barging back in any second now.

He hefts Brian into his arms to go back to actual bed, sighing happily at the relief in his back and joints when he finally gets to sink into his own mattress.

He runs his hands over Brian’s back until he relaxes his muscles and settles down into his chest, a rumbling purr starting up as Chris lets his eyelids droop.

He’s pulled out of his doze by a buzz under his hip.  Brian’s tail twitches, but he doesn’t stir as Chris carefully extricates his cell phone.

**good morning!**

There’s an attached picture of a travel cup of coffee in a car cupholder.

Chris smiles, tapping the call button before he can talk himself out of it.

_“Well, hello sunshine.  What a nice surprise.”_

“Hi,” Chris says, smiling up at the cracks in his ceiling.  “How was San Fran?”

 _“The San Fran-iest,”_ Darren sing-songs. _“My mother sends her love.”_

“Your mother?” Chris chokes a little bit.

_“I didn’t tell her anything, believe it or not. She knew something was up right away, and told me before I left that she expected me to bring a guest the next time.”_

“Oh,” Chris says, not sure how to respond to that.

_“She’s been asking me for years now about who I’m dating, and this time she didn’t even bother asking.  I’m sorry Chris, I really tried to keep it together.”_

“It’s okay,” Chris near-whispers, flexing his toes and arching his back and basking in the happiness that that brings him.

 _“I’ve missed you,”_ Darren says, so simply and matter-of-fact that Chris’s throat sticks.

“I’ve missed you too,” he replies thickly.  “A full night’s sleep is completely overrated. And, speaking of which-- my weekend with Lea was successfully navigated.  She doesn’t suspect a thing.”

 _“Awesome!”_ Darren says. _“And now you don’t have to deal with her for a long time.”_

“Uh, not that simple,” Chris interrupts.  “I think Lea will be seeing Cambria quite a few more times.”

_“What happened?”_

“She made me take her in to see our mural, and Cory was there.”

_“No fucking shit?”_

“They had _breakfast_ today.  Together.  After meeting _yesterday_.”

Darren whistles, long and low.  _“Well, on the one hand, that’s great for them. On the other…”_

“I just hope she starts staying at his apartment instead of mine.  Brian’s going to need days to recover from the trauma, I’m afraid.”

 _“Aw, poor babe,”_   Darren coos, and Chris smiles, puts the phone up to Brian’s twitching ear and scratches him under the chin.

*

There’s a snag two weeks out from the date of the unveiling.  They’ve been making good progress with the paint that the supply store in town can get them, but apparently the joint pull of both Cory and Chris isn’t enough to get them through the job.

“We only need twelve more tubes and four buckets,” Darren explains to the store manager again, shoving the progress pictures on his phone under his nose.  “I can mix the colors myself, you won’t even have to pay employees.  We can plunder the almost-ready-to-throw-away stock in the back.  Literally, we’ll do anything.”

“I’m sorry, but we’ve given more than our budget to charity this year,” he says firmly.  “I have my orders from the owner, and there is nothing I can do for you.  You can pay for the paint, or you won’t have it.”

He glares at them coldly, Darren swearing loudly before turning to storm out of the store, Chris trailing behind crossly.  The door can’t slam because it’s on a catch system, so Chris smacks his palm against the glass for good measure.

“This is ridiculous!” Darren yells, jingling his keys in his hand irritably.  “He could have told us this two fucking weeks ago, before we ran out of everything and had to hit a standstill.”

“We can’t ask Cory for money for this,” Chris adds miserably.  “It’s not his fault the agreement with the supplier apparently came with conditions.”

“Well I can tell you one thing, I won’t be buying a single thing from _that_ store,” Darren spits, frowning even as he opens Chris’s door for him and closes it behind him.

“Well, that won’t last long I’m afraid,” Chris says as Darren slides into the driver’s seat.  “They’re the only decent art supply store for fifty miles.”

“Well, I’ll be writing a strongly worded letter first,” Darren concedes, pulling out into the busy late-afternoon traffic.

Chris is quiet, tapping his thigh as Darren punches the blinker with more force than necessary.

“Wait, don’t go back to StraightforwarD,” Chris says, pulling out his phone.

“We can’t go back there _anyways_ , we don’t have enough paint to get to another stopping point. And we can’t paint half of the red with one bucket, and half with another--”

“ _The dye lots have to match exactly,_ I know honey,” Chris mimics him, tapping different word variations into his search engine.

“So where exactly am I going?” Darren asks, but Chris just waves him away, tapping a phone number to dial and putting the speaker to his ear.

The first call is a no-go.  The second-- not successful either.  But after the third one, Chris hangs up smiling.

“We need to get on the highway.  I’ll pull up the GPS on my phone.  Are we-- Darren?”  Chris looks around the car for where Darren has disappeared to.  He remembers, now, that Darren had said something before he locked the doors and left, but Chris had been negotiating and hadn’t even registered his leaving.

He knows this place, though. It’s Darren’s favorite, specialty tacos and fresh salsa to die for.  He’s dragged Chris here more than once (Though their queso _is_ the best. Chris only complains for effect), and Chris isn’t the least bit surprised when he comes out with a brown paper bag.

“Really, honey?” Chris says with an uncontrollable smile as Darren shoves the bag his way, pulling something out of his pocket as he slides in.

“Hey, I got you a Diet Coke!” Darren answers, turning his head to kiss Chris and passing off the blessed silver can.  “I’m sorry I was so mad. I guess we’ll have to go back to my place and figure something else out.”

Chris raises an eyebrow, knowing that Darren means they’ll drink beer with their tacos and end up making out on the couch and putting their hands down each other’s pants instead of watching a movie.  And as tempting as that sounds, it’s not the plan for tonight.

“Well, I hope you can eat those tacos on the road.”

“I’m sure I could figure it out, but-- wait, why? It’s only like a ten minute drive to my townhouse.”

Chris holds up his cell phone, wiggling it happily.  “But it’s a forty-minute drive to Paso Robles.  A little longer with traffic.  We’ve got like an hour and a half before their art supply store closes, but the employee promised me she would have our order packaged up and ready to go.”

“You’re shitting me!” Darren says, mouth hanging open a little.

“Nope,” Chris smiles, totally pleased with himself for finding a solution and even more pleased at being able to surprise Darren.  “And they even knocked 75% off the price when I explained that it was for charity.  Now, can you handle eating and driving, or should I feed you as we go?”

Darren leans over the center console, his seatbelt creaking in protest, Chris’s Diet Coke sloshing and bag tipping precariously in his lap as warm hands frame Chris’s face and warm lips press to his.  He’s smiling so hard it takes him a second to kiss back, splaying his own hands over Darren’s wrists.

Darren breaks the kiss, resting his forehead on Chris’s and nudging their noses together.  “You are,” Darren says quietly, “the most incredible man I know.”

“And that’s exactly how I want it to stay,” Chris says, tries to tease, tries to say playfully, but ends up professing low and special between them.  He leans in to press one last peck to Darren’s lips, lingering long enough to feel the corners of his lips curl up beneath his.

Darren’s fingers tighten on his scalp, just to feel the edges of his fingernails scrape as he pulls away, stopping to grab a foil-wrapped taco from the bag before he cranks the car.

He lets Chris pick the music and insists on rolling the windows down the instant that all their trash is tucked away to be disposed of later.  Darren likes to sing, he finds, as obnoxiously loud as possible.

It becomes a game, Chris flipping stations to see if there’s something that Darren can’t recognize in seconds, and Darren grinning as he wins, every single time.

When they start to drive through the mountains, the radio signals fade out and Chris gives up, letting the wind whipping through the car be their background noise.

“You have a nice voice,” Chris says honestly, feeling warm and full and happy in the foreground of the glorious sunset behind them.

“Thank you,” Darren says, taking Chris’s hand from where it’s resting on his thigh and tucking it into his palm.  “When I was little, my parents took us to all kinds of shows in San Francisco.  They were huge supporters of the arts.  We saw orchestras, ballets, art museums, musicals.  I was just a kid, but I knew that when I grew up I wanted to be like them. After they took me to see _The Nutcracker_ , I took ballet lessons for a year.  When we saw the orchestra, I begged my parents for violin lessons.  But when I kept getting frustrated and quitting, they told me whatever I chose next, I was going to have to stick with.  I _almost_ did singing, after we saw the most amazing show, the traveling performance of _Technicolor Dreamcoat_.  But then we were at a museum, and one of the pieces was actually an artist who would paint while you watched, and who would let children come up and hold the brushes and do a few strokes.  I was fucking sold.”

Chris smiles fondly, the idea of a young Darren, all flopping curls and thick eyebrows, climbing up on a stool and getting paint on his clothes.  Starry-eyed at how colors came to life right in front of him.

“So, you could have been selling millions of records, and instead…”

“Instead,” Darren cuts in, “I get to do this.  I get to pour myself onto canvas, and then share it with the world.  I’m happy just putting myself out there, revealing something about me that maybe I didn’t even know.  And then I meet total strangers that find something about themselves in my art.  It’s amazing. It’s exactly what I always wanted.”

Chris hums, nodding.  Not everyone paints for the same reasons.  Sometimes Chris feels like he would have wasted away if he didn’t have painting to express the emotions he couldn’t wear on his face. There were so many times in high school, and later, struggling in a strange city, that he was so frustrated and lost.  He wouldn’t crack until he finished the piece he was working on, then he would break down and let go.

“It took a long time for me to want to show people my drawings,” Chris says, knowing Darren didn’t ask but also knowing that he would want to hear.  “I tried to swear my high school art teacher to secrecy.  She ended up submitting pieces for me, without my name on them, to an art fair that came once a year in another small town nearby.  I won the overall prize, and there was this write-up in the newspaper about it, with all these people giving their thoughts and the judges explaining why they picked it.  That’s the first time I realized that I was hiding my art for the wrong reasons.  I was so scared about what people would say, but I could just let the art speak for me.”

The words should be clumsy, too heavy for a short car drive, too personal to reveal to someone he’s only been dating for a few weeks.  But Darren grips his hand tightly, picks it up to press his lips to the back of it, and the inside of the car is all pink-purple with the disappearing sun.

“Your art is beautiful and symbolic,” Darren agrees, “but you have just as many important, inspiring things to say.  Don’t forget that.”

Darren doesn’t say anything else, just hums along to the classical music playing and keeps holding Chris’s hand.

*

They pull into the parking lot of the art supply store with sixteen minutes to spare, Chris digging out his credit card.  A young woman greets them at the already-locked door, moving aside to let them through.

“Right on time,” she says, smiling as she points them towards the carefully stacked, already-packed boxes next to the register.

Chris hands off his credit card to Darren, looking through the boxes and consulting his mental checklist.

“Where is the cadmium yellow?” Chris interrupts the chatter between Darren and the sales associate.

“Check under the blues. I promise you, I triple-checked your order myself.”

Chris picks up the tubes, finding the cadmium and reshuffling the contents of the box so that he can see them all at once.

“We’re good to go,” he announces finally, straightening up and stretching his sore back.

“Yep, all good,” Darren says, handing Chris his card back, and nothing else.

Chris raises an eyebrow.  “Receipt?”

“Taken care of,” Darren says breezily, hefting a box into his arms and calling goodbye to Danya, the clerk, as he walks away with Chris stuttering protests in his wake.

“You have your hands full with that one,” Danya says, and Chris knows before he turns that she has a wistful sort of grin on her face.

“He’s… something special, that’s for sure,” Chris replies, hiding his smile by bending down to grab the second box.  “Thanks again, you saved the day.”

“No problem!  I hope your mural turns out beautifully!”

Chris doesn’t even have to ask how she knows that.  Darren probably tells intimate thoughts to people in line at the grocery store.

Darren’s waiting to take the box from him, sliding it into place in the trunk.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Chris says seriously, crossing his arms. 

“I know,” Darren says, closing the trunk with a flourish.  “But I can’t think of a better way to spend money.  Besides, we’re a team.  I couldn’t let you take _all_ the credit for saving the day.”

Chris scoffs, tries and fails to swallow his smirk.  “Heaven forbid.”

“Heaven forbid,” Darren says, mocking but not unkind, resting his hands on Chris’s crossed forearms to stretch up on his tiptoes and kiss him.

*

The ride home is quieter, but still musical.  Chris takes Darren’s hand first, plays the CD in the slot instead of fiddling with the radio.  It’s some kind of mix CD that Darren must have made, because he can feel in Darren’s fingers how he anticipates the start of every song.  He doesn’t sing as much, just on the first chorus or so, instead letting the comfortable silence stretch and tucking their arms closer together, resting their curled hands on his thigh.

“You know so many songs,” Chris says when they’re less than ten miles away from home.

“I paint to music, too,” Darren says, glancing at Chris with a mischievous gleam in his eye.  “It’s a great way to work out your art block, just slapping paint on canvas as the music moves you.”

Chris laughs, just loud enough to be heard over the music.  “I can honestly say I’ve never done that.  Unless playing top 40 radio to entice teenagers I was trying to teach counts.”

“It does not,” Darren confirms.  “Next weekend, when we have an off night, come to my townhouse.  I’ll cook you dinner and we can paint to music. I’ve barely used any of my canvas since I’ve been here.”

“I haven’t worked on much of anything besides the mural, either,” Chris agrees, scowling a little as he thinks about that for the first time.  “The long nights and huge scale have just left me burnt out.”

“I think we just had better ways to spend our free time,” Darren says, quietly contradictive.  Chris curls closer into him, as close as the bulky center console will allow, and hums along to the song as Darren sings.

*

Chris has warning about Lea coming to stay this time, in the way of emails, texts, and calls every single day the week leading up.  The mural is nearly finished, just final highlighting and sealing left, and he actually has time and energy to thoroughly clean the apartment before she arrives.

Cleaning also gives him something to physically do while he overthinks.  Painting is too meticulous to really spend mental energy on anything else at the same time, but scrubbing the shower is the perfect way to cleanse his mind.

It’s Darren.  It’s always Darren, lately, Darren he wakes up thinking about, Darren’s name the first thing he sees in the morning and his voice the last thing he hears before he goes to sleep.  Darren’s lips and hands and body that he thinks about when he’s turned on and restless, Darren that he talks to Brian about just to hear it out loud, Darren that he craves every minute of the day.  Darren that’s going to leave Cambria in less than a week and go back to his real life in San Francisco.

Sometimes for just a moment Chris can fully comprehend that not even six weeks ago, Darren Criss meant almost nothing to him.  Now it’s terrifying how _much_ he means, how wanting to be around him, be _with_ him is so far beyond being lonely or wanting human contact.  Chris had, over the last solitary years, convinced himself that a boyfriend wasn’t worth the extra work, that he didn’t have time or effort to spare for one.  And that’s just the thing-- being with Darren is simple.  It’s not like he’ll die without Darren, but more like he discovered something that made a backbreaking load he’d been carrying every day for 23 years feel like nothing at all.  He’s not looking forward to taking it back on alone.

*

Lea glides in with her normal fanfare and excessive baggage two hours after she said she would arrive, but Chris planned for the inevitable.  She kisses him on the cheek and tries to pet an already-fleeing Brian before declaring that she’s starved.

He takes her for Indian, having caught on to the less-than-subtle hints in her correspondence over the week.  Lea declares everything beautiful and delicious more than once, and Chris has the craziest thought that she looks good in Cambria.  She’s not too tan or too loud for a small West Coast town-- he thinks the town has more than enough personality to match her.

Chris runs out of things to say pretty quickly, glosses over the subject of Darren even when she presses, talking about pigment and brushes enough to get her right back to talking about herself.  More like talking about _Cory_ , who she’s apparently been on the phone with for hours every day.

It’s more than Chris ever wanted to know about his boss, even if they’re not so many years apart in age, but Lea is just so radiantly happy that he can’t bring himself to say anything negative.  It actually makes him wish he could gush over Darren like that, watch Lea’s face when he tells her about Darren insisting on buying every time they take a break at the diner down the block, Darren not needing excuses to kiss him or hold his hand shamelessly, Darren pulling him in for a slow dance and Chris not minding a bit that he’s covered in paint and Darren has completely broken his concentration.

He knows what she would say, though.  She’d smile and she’d squeal and tell him how happy she was-- and then she’d ask the inevitable.  _What about when the mural is done?_   Chris doesn’t have an answer for her.

Lea tells him forced-casually over the dregs of their wine that she’s scheduled to spend most of Saturday with Cory, which Chris had already mostly guessed.  She does offer to spend the rest of Friday night with kettle corn and _Real Housewives_ , which is fair compensation.  Chris tells her he has to paint with Darren on Saturday anyway, which isn’t a lie, but knows Lea will think he means the mural at StraightforwarD.  He’s banking that she’ll be too wrapped up making googly eyes at Cory to mention it to him and find out they really had a night off.

Chris leaves Lea scrolling through his TiVo and escapes to the kitchen, pulling out his phone as he gets out his air popper and the jar of salted caramel he has to hide from himself.

_All clear. She’s got plans with Cory pretty much all day tomorrow. I let her think we were working on the mural tomorrow night._

**You’re brilliant. I’ll see you around 5 then?**

_I’ll be there._

**xxx**

*

Chris feels silly when he pulls up to Darren’s blue townhouse with his palms sweating, his heart racing.  It’s not the first time he’s seen Darren’s house, not even the first time he’s been inside.  But cursory tours and early-dating polite cuddling and just-losing-their-shyness goodnight kisses seem like a distant memory now, something some other version of Chris experienced.

There’s a sweet desperation, now, in the way Darren’s lips are on his before he can even hand over the bottle of wine he’s holding.  He crumples under Darren’s touch, letting the doorjamb hold his weight as he presses and gives and takes and curls his fingers around warm skin.

When Darren finally lets him go, Chris is a little calmer, but anticipation buzzes in his stomach, flitting under his skin.  Darren grins at him, lips already kissed red, and takes the wine bottle.

“Welcome, again, to my humble abode,” he says grandly, sweeping his arms around in perfect imitation of the first time he invited Chris inside.  Chris laughs this time, much more comfortable now in sharing space with Darren.

“It’s just like I remember,” Chris exclaims, fake wonder playing perfectly.  Darren bumps Chris’s shoulder with his and takes his hand to lead him into the kitchen.

There’s something that smells amazing sizzling on the stove and wine glasses already set out.  Darren makes short work of the cork, handing Chris a full glass and touching them together in a toast.

“That smells so good,” Chris says, sipping the light, white wine Darren had told him to buy.  “Let me guess… shrimp?”

Darren gasps comically, brandishing his cooking spoon.  “When did you get so smart?”

Chris preens for effect.  “Born this way, baby. That better be cream sauce.”

“I wouldn’t dare serve you anything else.”  Darren clicks off the stove and pulls out garlic bread from the oven, gets plates from the cabinet. 

“I can help,” Chris offers, but Darren insists that this is his dinner to serve.  It’s beautiful, in its own little Darren way.  The plates are more department store than fine china, the napkins are folded paper towels and the candles are mismatched scents, but Darren flips off the lights before he sits down and it’s perfect.

“Thank you,” Chris says, squeezing Darren’s hand before he picks up his fork.

“Don’t say that until you actually try it,” Darren warns, and Chris just laughs, spearing a tiny shrimp to taste.

Darren is so cute, eyebrows all pinched together with worrying if Chris will like it.  “It’s wonderful, really,” Chris tells him, leaning over to kiss his cheek at Darren’s answering beam.

Darren claps his hands together.  “Dinner, and then painting.  You’re going to love it.”

“I know I will.”

*

“Gestural painting,” Darren says by way of explaining the two huge canvases on easels, a dozen cups of paint lined up on a table between them and only a couple of brushes.  “Or,” he clarifies, “that’s what they called it at that fancy art school I paid money to go to.  Action painting, I’ve also heard it called.  Or, most accurately, ‘glorified finger painting.’  They all work.”

“Uh huh,” Chris says skeptically, peering into the paint buckets.  “So the goal is?”

Music starts from where Darren has turned on his iPod dock.  “You let the music tell you what to paint.  Big movements, no wrong way to do it.”

“Let the… music.  Okay.”

“No, really,” Darren insists, turning up the trumpet-heavy jazz selection.  “Watch me.”

It’s the most inexact technique Chris has ever witnessed.  He can’t help but laugh at Darren bobbing back and forth like he’s gearing up for a boxing match, picking a cup of paint seemingly at random and not even stopping to wipe the excess off his brush before swiping it across the canvas. Chris watches as he paints a big, goopy streak of orange, followed by splatters of yellow he throws from a foot away, then red circles-- all random and smeared and bleeding into each other.

“What is it?” Chris asks finally, half-yelling over the piano solo happening behind them.

“It’s _art!”_ Darren yells back, setting his paintbrush on the easel ledge without caring that it smears paint all over his canvas and tugging Chris over.  He’s glad Darren thought ahead and let him borrow clothes to paint in, because apparently this is going to be even messier than usual.

“Here, it’s easy.  Just listen to the music, do what you feel.  I’ll help you.”

Chris complies, letting Darren put the brush in his hand, curve his body around his back to guide the brush into the blue paint and streak Chris’s canvas with it.

“See?”

Chris nods, taking back his hands.  The mental image makes him laugh, Darren in a college classroom full of very serious aspiring artists all being instructed to throw paint around without real direction.  Darren looks at him curiously, but he just shakes his head, wiping the blue paint off his brush to go in for another.

“You can totally mix this paint to hell and back if you want,” Darren says loudly, not breaking his stride of flicking his brush back and forth to make linear splatters.  “I poured these from bigger buckets. Go for it.”

At first Chris is tentative, trying to keep his colors in a complementary palette and his strokes similar. He’s so engrossed in painting that he jumps a little when the soothing, steady jazz changes with a fanfare of trumpets into a big band number, brash swing music that Chris can feel in his teeth.

He doesn’t catch Darren moving out of the corner of his eye until it’s too late, an arm snagging his elbow and twirling him around, making him spill paint over the tarp protecting the floor, garish purple splotches.

“Darren!” he cries, totally charmed as Darren leads him in some kind of two-step, swinging their arms and making the most ridiculous open-mouthed face.  He manages to stretch out of Darren’s grasp far enough to put down his brush and paint.  It’s not hard to follow after a minute, letting Darren guide the dance, copying what he does, laughing half at himself and half with how wonderful it all is.

The brass fades out to a drum solo and Darren leans in to kiss his cheek, pulling away and back to the canvases-- to _Chris’s_ canvas.  He picks up the purple that Chris had left behind and totally ruins every cohesive thing about his canvas, slashing through his careful strokes and trading for the green to ruin his color scheme, too.

“You don’t know what you just started,” Chris says, mostly to himself as the trumpets come back in with a vengeance.  There’s no color that could ruin Darren’s painting, as most of the colors are already _on_ the canvas, but that’s okay.  Chris fills in the white space with long chains of X’s and O’s, brightens the dark areas with yellow and pink.

He startles at the sharp pressure of Darren’s chin on his shoulder.  Chris freezes a little, worried about what Darren will think.  But there’s just a kiss at the side of his neck, then a hip check to nudge him back to his own side.

Chris can’t control his wide smile when he sees the big, lopsided heart that takes up almost his whole canvas, smeared there from wet paint and a clean brush.  It’s perfect.

The song style switches again, this time to a quieter blues song full of harmonica riffs.

“What do you think?” Darren asks, sounding out of breath.

“They’re ridiculous!” Chris laughs, poking Darren’s side at his disappointed look.  “Which doesn’t make them any less wonderful.  I can’t imagine this being taught as part of a formal arts education.”

“I had a very open-minded teacher for Acrylics III.  He made us do ours on the floor though, made us use mops and paper bags and all kinds of weird shit for texture. It didn’t look much different than with a brush, I thought.”

That’s even better than what Chris had imagined.  Still smiling, he reaches for his paintbrush again, using the pointed handle to sign his name into the corner.  His signature is mostly just two big C’s, so after a second of thought, he adds Darren’s initials, too.

When he steps back again to look, he doesn’t miss the soft, intimate smile on Darren’s face.

“Only one thing left to paint,” he says quietly, reaching out with his paintbrush to trail deep blue right over Darren’s wrinkled brow.

“Oh, you’re in deep shit now,” Darren nearly growls, grabbing a cup of paint from the table.  He draws a long, purple streak down the left side of Chris’s face, temple to chin.  Chris shies away from the cold wetness of the paint, but doesn’t miss how Darren is considering the cup in his hand.

“If you pour that into my hair, you’re going to be the one who has to get it all out, not me,” Chris says seriously, pointing at him threateningly.

Darren looks from the cup to Chris and then reaches behind to tug his shirt over his head.

Chris whines weakly.  He’s seen Darren’s torso, but only in glances of skin exposed by rucked-up shirts, not all at once, tan skin and dark hair and god, the tiniest, cutest brown nipples.

“Is… this okay?” Darren asks, words ringing in the silence of the songs switching again.  Chris nods.  He’s had too much time to think this week, and it means he knows what he wants.

“Yeah, it’s okay.”  Chris puts the paintbrush down in careful, deliberate movements, keeping his eyes on his toes to steel his nerves as he pulls his shirt off, too.

Darren groans, so low and close that Chris can feel the vibrations run over his skin, chased by a tremor of pleasure at the sound.  _“Fuck_ , Chris.”  Darren’s never seen him completely shirtless either.

“Good ‘fuck’?” Chris asks stupidly, still not quite meeting Darren’s gaze.  It’s not the first time he’s been half-naked with a boy, and he’s not a virgin or anything.  It’s just never felt… like this. Never held weight, had meaning like this.  Every time before, Chris only cared about what the other person could do for him.  Now, he wants to give Darren everything, wants to be exactly what he needs.

“The _best_ ‘fuck.’”  Chris has to close his eyes for a moment at that.  “Is it okay if I…. touch?” Darren’s voice is so quiet, his bare feet close enough that Chris can see his toes in the edge of his still-downturned gaze.

“Please.”

Chris exhales shakily as Darren’s fingertips feather-trace over his hips, hesitating before warm palms slide into place.  Thumbs trace over his stomach, the muscles he’ll never quite get defined the way he wants them, firm touch soothing, feeling, accepting.  Fingers flutter over his sides, dragging slowly up, up, making gooseflesh break out over his arms and his nipples draw up tight in anticipation.  A thumb skims over one, first accidental and then when Chris gasps, definitely on purpose. 

Palms trace their way under his arms to cup his shoulderblades, pulling him gently forward until he can feel the heat of another body, feel the whisper brush of the hair and skin of him.

“Chris.” It’s a whisper, a question, a plea in itself.  Chris opens his eyes, hardly realizing he’d closed them, and Darren’s nose is barely an inch from his, Darren staring openly at his mouth.  He waits until Darren meets his gaze, eyes darker, or maybe his eyebrows set lower. Then he reaches out, wrapping his arms around Darren’s neck, threading fingers through his hair. Closing all distance between them, mouth already half-open, impatient.

The desperation rises to the surface again, making Chris press hard against Darren’s mouth, hold his hair just on the side of too tight, grind his hips forward to find friction.  He can feel fingertips digging low on his back when he tugs on Darren’s hair, works Darren’s mouth open under his, hears his sharp breaths even over the pounding of his own heart.  Chris lets his hands slide over Darren’s muscled back and shoulders, slide down his chest to scrape his nails lightly over dark hair and dusky nipples.

Darren moans and Chris swallows it greedily, lets it go to his head and spread through his body, prick his skin.  He lets Darren pant in the space between their touching parted lips and searches lower, fingers pressing into deceptively soft sides cut by deliciously deep lines, the tiny swell of belly right at the edge of Darren’s paint-splattered sweatpants.  Chris feels drunk off the tiny hitches of breath and long whines he can pull out of him.

“Is this okay?” Chris asks this time, fingertips pushing tentatively under the soft, worn waistband.

“Yes,” Darren says, and Chris kisses him, grinds his thickening cock into Darren’s hip between working his pants down, fingers running from the scratch of his trimmed hair to the warm skin of his hip to the soft curve of his ass and back again, nudging down, down until they finally fall off his hips, pooling to the floor.

Chris breaks the kiss again to let Darren get his stilted, broken breaths evened out, dropping kisses down his neck, glancing over Darren’s shoulder to watch his own fingertips playing under the thick elastic band of Darren’s gorgeous black underwear.

“You planned for this?” Chris asks before he can stop himself, smiling at the silky texture under his fingertips and the playlist that has turned decidedly sensual.

“A little bit,” Darren concedes, leaning forward to mouth at the dip where Chris’s collarbone arches to become shoulder.  “Mostly I hoped.”

Chris smiles wide enough that he knows his nose is crinkled and he doesn’t even care, pressing their curved lips together in a messy, joyful kiss.  He nudges Darren’s arms with his elbows so that his hands skim down to where the ratty pair of sweatpants he’s wearing are already falling off his hips.  Darren, smart and gorgeous as he is, gets the hint and works them down with much less teasing that Chris did, letting Chris break away to step out of them before kissing him, so much skin touching skin-- knee to knee, belly to belly.

“Is it okay if we lay down here?” Darren asks, urgently, like it just occurred to him.  “I want to paint on you.  Your back.”

Chris eyes him curiously but nods, lets Darren kiss him down onto the scratchy tarp, rolls over and stretches out on his stomach as Darren picks his colors from the table.

“Your paints better be washable,” Chris says, pillowing his cheek on his folded arms and smiling when Darren pats his ass lightly instead of answering.

There’s shuffling and rearranging, lining up cups on the floor between Chris’s elbow and Darren’s knee, and then pressure and wet between Chris’s shoulderblades.  Then it’s gone.

“Um,” Darren starts, the first time he’s been awkward all night.  “Please don’t think this is a line, but I really don’t want this paint to ruin your underwear.”

Chris opens one eye saucily to give Darren a hard time, but he seems genuinely concerned.  Chris had been more than ready before he came to be completely naked, just not quite in this context.  He smiles because _of course_ this would be how he gets out of his clothes, so Darren can paint on him.

Chris can’t resist but to make it a bit of a tease, tugging slowly and raising his hips enough to slip his underwear down and give space to his half-hard cock, but not enough for Darren to see anything.  He can’t get them the rest of the way off without turning over, so he leaves them pooled around his upper thighs, smirking at Darren’s appreciative staring.

“Okay,” Darren breathes, more to himself than to Chris, and picks up his brush again.

It’s mesmerizing, the paintbrush moving steadily along Chris’s bare skin.  He lets his eyelids droop but doesn’t sleep, reaching out to dip his fingers in the paint cups and dragging them over Darren’s skin, crisscrossing colors and drawing stars and hearts and handprints down his legs and stomach and sides.  Chris can’t do much, stuck on his stomach and staying relatively still, but he manages to get a lot on Darren, not nearly as apologetic for Darren’s underwear as Darren had been for his.

  
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Darren paints the whole of his back, paint dripping down his sides and skimming the top of his ass.  Then, after a minute or so of consideration, Darren shamelessly paints his ass, too, Chris trembling underneath him.  Darren tugs at the underwear still at his upper thighs and Chris obligingly lifts his hips, lets Darren raise each foot to take them all the way off.

He rests, blinking slowly and smiling sleepily as Darren finds his cell phone and snaps a picture of whatever is on Chris’s back, then puts it aside.

“Am I beautiful?” Chris asks, mostly joking.  His breath catches, sticks in his throat as he hears the soft thump of another pair of underwear hitting the floor, feels the brush of Darren straddling his knees and arching forward, tucking his hands underneath Chris’s folded arms.

“The most beautiful man I’ve ever known,” Darren says, breathes right into his ear and his soul, punctuates with a kiss to the thin skin just underneath.  Chris writhes, pulls Darren’s hands in to fold his arms along his own, tugs him down so that he’s draped over every inch of Chris’s back.

“Your painting is smearing,” Darren manages to say, nosing into Chris’s hairline, pressing his lips to the back of his neck.

“You took a picture,” Chris gasps, spreading his knees to roll his hips up against the silky, sticky bare skin of Darren’s cock.  “And it’ll look twice as beautiful on you.”

He finally manages to get Darren exactly where he wants him, nestled between the two plump cheeks of his ass, every thrust dragging hard over his sensitive hole.  Chris arches his back, the rough friction of the tarp underneath them too much, and lets Darren rock his hips against him, breathing harsh into the crook of his neck and keeping his front pressed flush to Chris’s back.

“God, so gorgeous. Want you,” Darren mumbles into his skin, trailing kisses over one shoulder, across his neck, down the other shoulder.

Chris stretches out, brings his knees together and straightens his back so that Darren has to stop moving, stop building heat too quickly.

“Fuck me,” Chris says, low but clear.  “I want you to fuck me.”

“ _Chris,”_ he groans, pressing his forehead into Chris’s shoulder and rocking his hips, one jilted thrust.  “God, fuck. Yes. You’re sure?”

“So sure,” Chris says, kissing the bicep framing his ear, the only part of Darren he can reach.

Darren pulls back enough that his cock slips free, Chris only whining for a second before Darren’s lips are on his, their bodies so tangled Chris isn’t sure which parts are whose anymore.

“Shower with me first?” Darren asks, eyes bright.  “I’ll wash your hair even if there’s not paint in it.”

“Okay,” Chris agrees.

*

Chris twists in front of Darren’s small bathroom mirror, but with how the paint smeared before it dried Chris can’t make out a thing on his back.

“What did you paint?” he asks, looking over to where Darren has one hand under the shower stream, waving it in and out to check the water temperature.

“It’s… hard to explain. I’ll show you the picture later.”

Chris pouts a little, not totally pleased with that answer. But he can wait. The idea of running his hands all over Darren’s body is too tempting to think about anything else.

“I’m afraid this won’t be romantic for very long,” Darren says apologetically, pulling back the curtain so Chris can step in first.  “My hot water heater is not so great.”

“That’s okay,” Chris says.  “We need to save it for when we get dirty all over again.”

Darren washing his back is euphoric, almost better than when he painted it.  The heavy weight of intimacy is harder to bear standing up, and Chris’s knees are weak with it, head light with it.  He arches into Darren’s touch, floating removed from the desperation, if only for a moment.  The water swirling around their feet is every color of the rainbow.

He lets Darren wash his hair and then insists on reciprocating, loving how he gets to run his fingers through his curls again and again, and all too pleased with himself at how Darren’s head lolls back at the attention, his jaw slacks.

“Feel good?” Chris teases, guiding him under the nozzle again.

“Y-yeah,” Darren manages, jaw tight and knuckles white where his fist is digging into his side.  The heat between them is too much to ignore.  Chris stops teasing, then, letting Darren rinse his hair, closing his eyes so Darren can get the purple paint off his face, letting Darren rest a foot on his thigh so he can scrub off the finger-painted streaks on his calves.

“Should I leave you to, uh…?” Darren asks uncertainly, and Chris swats at him, rolls his eyes.

“Go make sure your sheets are clean, dummy.  I’ll be there in a minute.”

*

Darren is on him as soon as Chris walks into the bedroom, not bothering with wearing a towel.

“God,” Darren moans, licking at the trails of water still dripping from his hair.  Chris rocks against his also bare hip, cock thickening at every pass of Darren’s tongue and exaltation into his skin.

“I taste like soap,” Chris says, amused and fascinated by how the water makes Darren’s eyelashes spiky and even more striking than usual.

“Nope, taste so good,” Darren insists, licking at his collarbone again.

“Hey,” Chris says softly, puts his hands on Darren’s shoulders so he’ll look up.  Chris is struck, foolishly, by the thought of that first day they became coworkers, when even after he had walked away, Darren stood on the sidewalk watching him go.  Darren’s on his second beard since then, finally tamed and cut his hair, gloriously naked, strong and soft and so very Chris’s.

Darren smiles, leaning in to kiss Chris lightly.  “Still good?”

“Still good,” Chris echoes, squeezing over his biceps.  Darren is so beautiful he can’t get over it, so much smooth skin and corded muscle, warm and alluring in a way that has Chris wanting to fall into him and never get back up.  He takes Darren’s wrist, thumb pressing into the delicate inner skin, and tugs him towards the bed.  Darren lets him, gathering up close to Chris when his knees hit the mattress and then kissing him down, down, shifting limbs and sheets to fall together.

Chris can feel his skin heat all the way down to his chest as Darren settles over him, body moving closer with each press of his lips.  He can’t help the low moan in the back of his throat when Darren finally relaxes into him, touching everywhere and shifting to his elbows, framing Chris’s face.

“ _God,_ ” Chris breathes over Darren’s lips, letting his eyes close as Darren rests their foreheads together, lazily rubbing against him.  Chris bends his knees so that Darren is nestled between them, smiling when Darren bucks up harder, groaning.

He looks over to the nightstand, incredibly pleased when he sees the near-full bottle of lube and strip of condoms already out and waiting.  “Ambitious,” Chris quips, only fumbling a little before closing his fingers over the bottle.

Darren’s not laughing as Chris holds the lube in front of his face, shaking it enticingly.  “You want to do the honors?” Chris asks, still teasing, but he frowns a little when Darren doesn’t smile.  “Don’t make me say I want this again.  You know I do, Darren.”

“Okay,” Darren agrees finally, taking the bottle from Chris and capturing his lips in a kiss so deep that Chris feels it aching in his chest, curling his toes with the force of it.  He runs his fingers through Darren’s damp curls and kisses back with every piece of him, arches his body closer and squeezes Darren tight between his knees, licking into Darren’s mouth with every bit of emotion he has.

The crease between Darren’s eyebrows is gone when he lets go, his playful smile returning as he kisses down Chris’s chest instead, running his teeth over a nipple and making Chris tug sharply on his hair.  He moves just slow enough to have Chris wiggling, fighting to keep his hips from bucking even as the tip of his cock is bumping Darren in the chin.

“Impatient,” Darren comments, lightly kissing the deep purple head to tease him, licking pre-come from the slit to have Chris moaning in frustration and pleasure.  He wraps his sinfully red lips around Chris’s cock far enough to suck the whole head in his mouth, tongue flicking around the ridge.

“God, you have a wicked mouth,” Chris groans, throwing an arm over his forehead.

Darren lets his jaw slack and Chris’s cock smacks his belly wetly. “Only because I want to do wicked things to you,” Darren says, low and dark before he mouths at the tender skin of Chris’s inner thigh. 

He doesn’t miss the click of the bottle opening no matter how good the bruises Darren sucks into his thin skin feel, and Chris rolls his hips up in anticipation, spreads his knees further apart.  Gentle, searching fingers, warm on his skin, nudge at the base of his cock and cradle the heavy weight of his balls, tugging them out of the way.  He exhales shakily as slick fingers trace over his fluttering hole, digging his heels into the mattress to angle his hips more.

“Good?” Darren asks, still not pressing in, just circling.

“Good,” Chris breathes, fights the urge to roll his hips down and force Darren’s fingers inside him.  “Just-- you can.  You can go ahead.”

Darren shifts, rearranges so that his knees are tucked underneath him, free hand petting low on Chris’s hip and a single digit finally pushing past the tight ring of muscle.  Chris stays as still as he can, focusing on opening up for Darren’s long fingers.

“Two… I can do two,” Chris gasps, and Darren looks at him silently, watching his face as he slides his index finger out and presses two fingertips instead, working them inside.  Chris flexes his hips just a little, the drag smoother now, slick fingers gentle but steady, insistent.

Darren doesn’t wait for him to ask for three, Chris twisting and arching for it, turning his sweaty temple into the pillow to muffle his moans.  Darren is perfect and patient, his fingers skirting the edge of his limit over and over, pushing him further until Chris is writhing, hips rolling up to meet him.  There’s nothing but pleasure as Darren spreads and flexes the three fingers inside him, firm drag over his slick rim, fingertips brushing his prostate and making him shudder.

Chris sweeps his sweaty bangs out of his eyes and laughs a little when he sees Darren watching his own fingers working, eyebrows furrowed and lips parted in awe.

“Darren, honey,” Chris practically whines, loosening his hold on the sheets to take the hand that’s teasing over his cock.  He pulls Darren closer, letting him get his balance but already mouthing at the base of his throat, tonguing away the beads of sweat that dot his hairline.  Darren steadies himself on one hand next to Chris’s shoulder, other hand still buried in his ass as he leans down to kiss him.  Chris meets him with an open mouth, hands clawing frantically and not missing the full-body twitch as Chris pets over the back of his neck.

He does it again, fingers light and ticklish on purpose until Darren pushes him into the mattress, breathing harshly through his nose and slamming his fingers in with force that leaves Chris gasping.

“ _Fuck_ , shit fuck,” Chris swears, grabbing the pillow under his head to ground himself.  “Oh my god, Darren, do that again.”

Darren laughs breathily, and Chris can feel him pressing up and curling his fingers, obscene slick sounds Chris can barely hear over his own moans as Darren doubles his pace.  Chris’s whole body seizes up every time he hits his prostate, leaving Chris feeling strung out and losing his mind with the need to come.

“You’re so fucking hot, look at you,” Darren growls, making Chris rolls his hips so hard that Darren loses his slick grip.

“Oh my god, fuck me, please fuck me now,” Chris practically begs, wiggling to reach a condom on the nightstand, ripping it open with clumsy hands.

Darren drops kisses all over his forehead and Chris relaxes a little, focusing back on Darren instead of the building heat inside of him.  He leans up and kisses Darren off-center, sitting up slowly and taking Darren with him until he’s propped up on one arm, Darren still between his bent knees.

He traces over the hard line of Darren’s jaw, the smooth column of his neck, the hard planes of his chest and the just-there softness of his belly to find his straining cock, sticky with pre-come.  Darren grabs Chris’s thigh to steady himself, smearing lube and moaning as Chris rolls the condom down.

He moves to lay down again but Darren stops him, one hand splayed across his back.  “Wait can we-- like this?”  Darren pulls him close again, spreading his folded legs so that Chris can settle between them, his knees still digging into Darren’s ribs.

“Just like this,” Chris agrees quietly, leaning in to kiss him sweetly.  He watches Darren find the lube and pour it into his hand, slick up the latex covering his cock.  Chris is restless with anticipation, scooting closer and leaning back to give Darren more room.

Finally, finally Darren is guiding the head of his cock down to Chris’s stretched entrance, just resting there.  His fingers dig into Chris’s back, his side, and Chris whines helplessly as Darren thrusts in slowly, stilted increments and adding more lube until in one smooth motion, he’s completely buried in Chris’s ass.

Chris tips his head back, letting his elbows buckle a little and trying to breathe through the feeling of being so deliciously full.  He smiles at the wet kisses over his chest, teasing around his nipple, gasping when Darren sucks the pebbled flesh into his mouth.  Chris moves his hips in a slow circle, watching Darren groan.  He works up a pace, lifting up and grinding back down in smooth rotations over Darren’s lap, chasing the heat that’s soaking into his bones and moving in waves over his skin.

Darren moans his name and the hands on his back move to the curve of his ass, hauling Chris more into his lap and making him cry out sharply.  His thrusts turn more shallow until it’s just grinding, Chris moaning helplessly and holding fast to Darren’s shoulder.  Darren’s so close to him-- bodies joined, but mind and heart too, Chris exposed and raw and absolutely taken care of.

A fist curls around the leaking head of his cock and Chris’s hips jerk, his elbow finally giving way and he falls backwards, losing his breath.  Darren slides his hands out from under Chris’s arched back, stretches out with an audible pop from both his knees and is face-to-face with Chris again.

“Hi,” Darren says, deceivingly innocent and sweet as he simultaneously kisses Chris’s nose and starts moving his hips again.

“Hey there,” Chris teases back, biting back a groan at Darren’s steady thrusts in his ass, the rhythmic strokes over his cock.  He stretches his upper body sinuously, throwing his arms around Darren’s neck and wrapping his long legs around Darren’s trim waist.

He clings to Darren, tossing his head to keep his bangs out of his face and moaning unashamed when Darren rubs his thumb just under the head of his cock, rewarded with Darren thrusting harder, angling to hit his prostate again.  He can’t tell if he’s covered in Darren’s sweat or his own, or maybe a mixture of both.  Darren is gritting his teeth, grunting under his breath as the strong muscles of his shoulders shift under Chris’s hands and his ass flexes under Chris’s heels. 

He’s almost plaintive when he can feel his orgasm imminent in his balls, in the tightening and twisting in his stomach.  This transcendent connection wouldn’t last forever, even when it feels like it could.

“Oh god, harder, right there,” Chris near-commands, arching his back to hold Darren where he is, to make him hit that same spot again and again.  He knocks Darren’s hand out of the way and takes his own cock in his fist, pumping short strokes around the head and every muscle in his body seizing as he writhes on Darren’s cock, right _there--_

He screams Darren’s name as orgasm hits him, wave after wave of pleasure-sparks slowly relaxing his body in stages as he sobs to catch his breath.  Come streaks his chest and stomach and is making a mess of his hand but Chris slides through it, his leg twitching, his toes spasming with just the ghost of a curl.

Darren is kissing him, jaw and temple and lips, and Chris is laugh-sobbing with relief, letting his arms and legs fall to the mattress.  “You are so fucking beautiful, oh god,” Darren whispers into his skin, moaning Chris’s name and still restlessly pumping his hips.  Chris catches his breath enough to notice the strain of his muscles, the needy set of his mouth.  Chris cups his jaw and pulls him down, kissing him deep and letting his knees fall open wider.  He opens up and lets Darren give and take, flexes the muscles of his ass just to hear the sweet high noises in the back of his throat.

“Come on baby, you’re so gorgeous.  Come for me,” Chris says, soft in Darren’s ear.  He runs his hands over Darren’s ass, the sweat-stick muscles of his back, pulls on his damp hair.

With a low moan, Darren thrusts in sharply once, cries out, then drags his cock slowly over Chris’s sensitive hole as he pants through his orgasm.  Chris kisses him on struck-dumb lips until Darren responds, draping his body over Chris’s and kissing him deeply.

He greatly feels the loss of Darren pulling out, wincing and whining petulantly until Darren disposes of the condom and comes back to kiss it away.

“Lay with me a while before we shower?” Chris asks, not crazy about how sticky and slick his ass is, but much happier with Darren tucked into his side, curly hair tickling his jaw and his hand steady on the center of his chest.

“Yes,” Darren answers, half-slurred.  Chris kisses the top of his head and closes his eyes happily at Darren’s gentle hum.

*

When Chris opens his eyes, the sun is so bright he has to roll over and bury his face into Darren’s chest.  He blinks carefully, letting his eyes adjust and smiling happily at Darren’s relaxed face, the steady rise and fall of his chest, all the warm, naked skin around him, legs tangled in his and an arm wrapped securely around his waist.

It smells good, so very Darren with the certain brand of fabric softener in the sheets and the shampoo and soap that they’re both wearing. The cord necklace that Darren never takes off is still around his neck, and Chris touches it fondly.  There’s a welcome ache in his muscles, the kind that comes with bone-deep satisfaction, and Chris wants to tuck the covers up around them and sleep for another four hours.  Or maybe wake Darren up with a blowjob.

He runs his fingers down Darren’s chest, deliberating idly, still warm and floaty but mind finally waking up _._   Chris groans and rubs his eyes.

Shit. Shit shit _shit._

“Shit,” Chris says, all too awake now.  He forgot about Lea.

“Babe?” Darren slurs as Chris tries to slip out of bed without waking him.  He doesn’t even get to fully appreciate the pet name or the way Darren is so cuddly, trying to pull him back.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Chris says quickly, letting Darren keep him from going far and kissing him apologetically.  “I don’t want to leave at all, but I forgot about Lea. I didn’t text her about staying out all night and she’s going to wake up soon and see I’m gone and—”

Darren kisses him mid-sentence, runs his hand up into Chris’s hair and presses close, moving their lips together slow and easy.  He pulls away gently.  “It’s okay, I understand. I’ll miss you though.”

Chris groans loudly.  “How am I supposed to leave this bed after _that?”_

Darren practically shoves him off the mattress to get him moving, watching him get dressed and laughing when Chris has to go all the way to the second-bedroom-studio to get his underwear.  Luckily his clothes from yesterday are folded neatly in the bedroom where he changed.

“Shit— Darren, let me borrow a t-shirt.”

“Second drawer,” Darren says, pointing at his dresser.  “Why…?”

Chris smiles at the silly graphic tees that spill out as soon as he opens the drawer.  “There’s no way I can come back wearing a button up, she’ll know those are date clothes.  In fact, _fuck_ , she totally knows that these are my date night jeans, too. Fuck fuck fuck.”

“Look, you let her think we were painting the mural, right? Just wear what you were painting in last night. Tell her I invited you over for drinks after we finished early last night, and then you fell asleep on my couch.  I couldn’t bear to wake you up and have you drive home so late.  I didn’t know Lea was staying with you this weekend so I didn’t think to let her know.”

Chris gapes at him. “You’re a goddamn genius.”

“What can I say,” Darren says, shrugging and beaming when Chris climbs back on the bed for just one kiss more.

*

“Lea!” Chris launches into an explanation as soon as he walks in the door.  “I’m so sorry, you’ll never believe it, I fell asleep on Darren’s _couch_ —”

He stops, closing the door behind him and listening again, but there’s no running water in the bathroom, no click of heels in the kitchen.  He checks his bedroom and finds nothing, no one in the apartment apart from a very hungry Brian, who he feeds quickly before his meows break the window panes.

Chris double-checks what he thought he saw when he came in, and her car is indeed outside, but Lea’s nowhere in the apartment.  Immediately thinking the worst, he calls her cell.  She doesn’t answer.

He’s seriously looking up how to file a missing persons report when a text from her comes in.  Sighing in relief, he occupies himself with handwashing the few dishes in the sink, rehearsing his excuses for being gone all night.

Lea basically tiptoes in a half-hour later, looking bashful.  “Sorry, I didn’t think to text you about going to breakfast with Cory. You were asleep and I thought you would still be asleep when I got back.”

Chris raises an eyebrow at that, puts down the glass in his hand and moves closer to where she’s standing in the living room.  Her hair is pulled up in a messy bun, her clothes wrinkled where they shouldn’t be.  And her mascara is definitely second-day.

“Oh my god, you slept over at his house, didn’t you.”

Lea splutters a little, looking affronted.  “So, what if I did?”

Chris huffs, crossing his arms.  “I can’t believe this. I was so worried about how you would feel when you woke up and I wasn’t here, for this.”

“Wait,” Lea says, waving her hands, “ _you_ didn’t come home either? What, did you have a sleepover at StraightforwarD?”

Chris can feel his face turning red even as he lies smoothly, “No, we got finished really early yesterday so Darren invited me to his townhouse to see his paintings and have a drink or two.  _Nothing happened,_ ” he says quickly, seeing her eyes light up and realizing what a baldfaced lie it was, “I just fell asleep on his couch and he didn’t want to wake me up.

“ _You_ on the other hand,” he says, pointing his finger and feeling really fired up now, “had _sex_ with someone you just met two weeks ago!”

Lea puts her hands on her hips and scowls, furious.  “It is not your place to judge what I do! And I don’t have to explain myself to you. Think whatever you want. At least _I_ am not still moping over a coworker I’m too shy to ask out! I can’t believe you fell asleep on his couch. What, did you sneak into his room at night to watch him sleep?”

Chris laughs near-hysterically, tense with the words he can’t say and how much it hurts to know that Darren’s going to leave in less than a week and sick with himself for lashing out at the person that’s supposed to love him unconditionally.  He throws his hands up and leaves the room.  He gets out of a long shower thirty minutes later to a text from Lea, saying she’s staying at Cory’s for the rest of the weekend.

*

Chris invites Darren over for dinner at his apartment before they have to go in to finish the highlighting once and for all.  It’s kind of a pre-emptive celebratory dinner, one for the two of them to enjoy with each other before they have to spend the unveiling mingling and being the center of attention.

He gives Brian a stern talking to and gets a recipe for sautéed chicken from his mother.  The cooking goes well, but Chris is so worried about the food that he forgets about himself.  He’s not even dressed and his hair is a floppy mess with ten minutes before Darren is supposed to arrive.

He manages to get his hair in order in record time with a dozen colorful swears in the process, and skids back into the kitchen to check on the chicken just as Darren knocks.

“Hi, darling,” Chris greets him, kissing him soundly.  He gestures around a little frantically, saying, “I promise I started the day out more organized than this, and I also promise that I have an outfit all picked out that doesn’t have a single paint splatter on it.  Can you just make sure the oven doesn’t catch on fire so I can change?”

“Of course,” Darren agrees, yanking him in for another lingering kiss before letting him go back to the bedroom.

Chris changes quickly, not bothering to put on any shoes.  When he gets back to the kitchen he sees he guessed right and that Darren has already lost his loafers.

Darren turns around as Chris walks back in and Chris smiles widely when he sees that Darren is holding Brian.

“My two favorite boys,” Chris coos, dipping to scratch Brian’s head and melting at the kiss that Darren presses to his forehead.  He slips away to check on the chicken, using a meat thermometer to declare the dish to be done. Brian comes into the kitchen first, and Chris lets him rub against his calvesm watching how good Darren looks in his kitchen, how comfortable he is pulling out dishes, how he knows where the wine is and the glasses, too.

After dinner, Chris guides Darren back to his bedroom without any pretense.  He needs to be physically close to him now, to feel the reassuring touch of his skin.  Darren doesn’t protest at all, seems to have the same feeling in the needy press of his hands and the constant hard kisses to his lips.

They undress and curl up under the blankets, just cool enough in the apartment to still cuddle, not urgently hard enough to do anything about it just yet.  Chris is content listening to the thud of Darren’s heart under his ear.

Without saying anything, Darren stretches out to lean over Chris, pulling something from between the bed and the nightstand.

It’s a sketchbook page, that much Chris can tell at first.  It’s not until Darren smooths it out and Chris sees what it is that he gets embarrassed.

“That was in my studio originally,” Chris says quietly.  “Brian must have been playing with it.”

“This is really good, Chris,” Darren tells him, nudging it closer to Chris so that he has to look. It’s bare bones, not much to see, but Chris knows exactly what it is, what it’s supposed to be.  It’s a cat, sort of, mosaiced in starlight and strung lights and a play on dark and light.  There’s elements of a cityscape, brick pattern faint but there, and the whole thing isn’t much more lineart and scribbled notes so that Chris could remember later, to paint.

“This is what I drew that day we met at the coffee shop.  The second time, when I wouldn’t let you see.”

Darren is quiet, leaning his head back onto Chris’s shoulder.

“Lea would die if she saw me paint a cat.  I still don’t quite believe it came from my hand. This isn’t really my style at all.”

“It’s okay to let your style change,” Darren insists, protective of the sketch.  “It’s okay to grow in your art.  You’re totally allowed to surprise yourself.”

“That seems to be all I’ve done since I met you,” Chris muses, smiling as he pries the drawing out of Darren’s hands, thinking maybe he will try to paint it after all.  He rolls over to tuck it safely away again.

“What would you do without me?” Darren jokes, stretching lazily and making the sheets slip down too low on his hips.

Chris pushes the covers away and climbs into his lap, powerless against such a tempting sight.  “I hope I never have to find out,” he says, too serious and sad for what he knows was a joke, kissing Darren hard to hide it.

*

Lea’s filming has wrapped, so she’s free to be in Cambria at least until the homecoming gala for StraightforwarD.  She even stays at Chris’s house the first night, brings a bag full of candy and popcorn.  Chris apologizes immediately, and she does too, hugging right there in Chris’s kitchen.

“Let’s order in pizza, I need to gain back ten pounds immediately,” Lea says, already grabbing the takeout menu from Chris’s folder of them.

He wishes he could see Darren, has spent almost every night with Darren at one house or another for a week now.  There’s not even the excuse for the mural anymore—it’s done, the permanent sealant drying so that the smell can be mostly shooed out of the lobby before the gala.

Darren had cried when they declared it finished, popping the champagne bottle and passing it back and forth, drinking straight from it and making Chris tear up, too.

It was Chris who jumped on Darren, kissing and clinging to him like the world was ending, feeling emotionally strung-out and needing Darren to ground him.  The rickety wooden scaffolding wasn’t exactly conducive to any kind of naked act, but Chris managed to get Darren on top of him and both their zippers down, grinding up desperately until they both came, streaking Chris’s stomach.

It’s a memory to take with him, a christening for their mural and a sort of closure for Chris.  It wasn’t what he wanted, but still way more than he expected.  It was almost symbolic, the two of them doing something they shouldn’t that they could never do again, six feet off the ground where the foundation could crumble if they moved too much.  Chris didn’t invite Darren over afterward, just went home and didn’t sleep for hours.

They get through three whole episodes of Downton Abbey before Lea manages to bring it up.

“Is Darren going back to San Francisco?  Or is he making the move to LA permanently?”

It’s strange and terrible, how words can feel just like getting punched in the gut.

“I don’t know,” Chris says, covering up his strangled voice with a cough.  “He hasn’t told me.”

He hasn’t.  Chris didn’t know how to bring up the topic, always feeling like it’s too serious to talk about when they’re both so happy, preferring to kiss Darren harder and make him come again instead of hearing him say the words he’s dreading.  So he’s ignored it for weeks, what could a few more days hurt?

He knows the answer.  It’s going to hurt him irreparably, he’s afraid.

Lea nods, patting his hand.  “Either way, I’m sure we’ll hear about him.  And he’ll hear about you, too. He’ll be telling the world about how he got to work with _Chris Colfer.”_

There’s acid bubbling up Chris’s throat and he swallows thickly, turning up the volume and saying something about the show to get Lea to shut up.

*

The day of the mural unveiling, Chris wakes up with a cloud of dread already hanging over him, twisting his stomach in knots.

He has hours until the gala, too many hours.  Chris feeds Brian and then drinks three Diet Cokes one right after the other, thinking.

Pulling on a pair of paint-splattered sweatpants, Darren’s actually, Chris goes into his studio.

It feels unfamiliar, now, the air stuffy and everything covered in a thin layer of dust after weeks of disuse.  Chris opens the window and wipes everything down, checks his canvases and paint and blows dust off them, too.

He lines up his supplies, puts colors on his palette without stopping to consider why, and turns to the big blank space in front of him.

The ideas spill out of him, come quickly.  First, dregs of tea leaves in a paper cup, crumpled empty sugar packets and a just-visible sketchbook off to the side.  He puts that canvas down to pick up another, blocking a shelf full of pointless little knickknacks, all made out of seashells. He grabs another canvas, starting shapes of a car dashboard, a corded necklace hanging from the rearview mirror and a certain radio station on the dial.

His doorbell rings.  He ignores it the first time, thinking it’s just a package he’ll get later.  But then it rings again, and again, and he can hear the faint thuds of someone knocking.

Irritated, Chris tears himself away from his studio and doesn’t even bother putting on shoes, flouncing down the stairway and opening the door unceremoniously to—

“Darren?”

It’s him, wearing three different shades of blue and canvas shoes so beat up that his toes are poking through.  He’s unshaven and rumpled and looking at Chris silently, determined set in his jaw.

“Honey, I’m going to see you in a few hours at the gala,” Chris says, still holding the doorknob.  “Is everything okay?”

Darren shakes his head. “This can’t wait. I should have told you sooner. I should have told you that night you came to my apartment. I was going to, but I didn’t want you to feel like you were _obligated_ , or anything, so I… didn’t.  Forgive me.”

“Darren,” Chris says, confused.  “What…?”

“I love you.”

Three simple words that hold the world inside them.  Darren doesn’t have to elaborate, Chris can feel everything those words mean in the weight of them, the texture and cadence of them.  Chris is speechless, powerless, clinging to the door to make certain that the earth isn’t shifting on its axis when it feels so much like it is.

“You don’t have to say anything back,” Darren says, smiling now, a little sad.  “I just had to tell you.  I needed you to know.”

Chris can’t make his mouth _move_ , can’t think of something to say that would come out the right way, that wouldn’t ruin everything on their last day together.  He finally releases one iron grip on the door and reaches out to take Darren’s hand, tries to squeeze into his skin what he can’t put into words.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Darren whispers, kissing Chris’s cheek before he goes, hands shoved in his pockets and his car parked too far away for Chris to see it.

Chris closes the door in his wake, the mark of his kiss burning like a brand.  It’s not _fair_.

“I love you, too,” Chris says to the door, what he couldn’t say to Darren even though it’s a truth laden in every single fiber of his being, because it would ruin everything.

He can’t say goodbye to Darren knowing that they love each other.  He can’t have just a piece of Darren, not anymore.  He could lie to himself about what was happening when he could convince himself that he was the only one invested, that Darren was just having fun before he had to leave again. But now… now—

Chris can’t bear to walk back into his studio, but he has to. His fingers itch, his body yearns to paint.  He gently moves the canvas of the cup over to another easel to dry, picks up a clean palette and stares into his box overflowing with paint tubes.

Brown, ten shades of it.  Strong arms, dusted with dark hair and holding a purring cat with yellow eyes half-closed.  Blue, worn and soft.  Sheets next to a dark nightstand, two pairs of glasses folded, side by side.  Green, harsh artificial glow.  Light that illuminates a smile, two hands entwined and resting on the gearshift.

He turns away from the paint, sitting slowly to the floor, back against the wall.  He’s never had so much emotion that he _couldn’t_ paint.  That’s a first.

Then again, Darren’s a first.  Maybe an only.  Chris lets his head fall back with a _thunk_ he barely feels.  He’s such an idiot for falling so hard and wanting so much, for caring more about having another day, another few precious hours with Darren than to deal with unpleasant consequences.

Brian wanders in, meowing and no doubt looking for food.  Chris grabs him anyways, forcing him into cuddling, stroking hard over his back until he begrudgingly relaxes and lets Chris hold him.  Chris kisses over his fur and whispers, “What are we gonna do when he leaves, Bri?”

Of course, Brian only puts up with that for so long, and he leaves a scratch on Chris’s wrist as he finally wiggles out of his hold, tail twitching irritably and meowing loudly as he stalks out of the room and towards his food bowl.  Chris stands up, stretches lightly and follows after him, cooing soothingly.

He avoids the studio, putting on an episode of _Downton Abbey_ and not hearing a word, then cleaning the kitchen and taking out the trash and doing anything he can to distract himself.  And when all else fails, he knows what he has to do.

The bathroom has always been Chris’s favorite place to think.  When he was a kid, his parents let him take his own baths as soon as they could trust him not to scald himself.  The bathroom was always uninterrupted private time, and with a sick kid sister and overbearing parents, Chris learned early on to take advantage.  He always brought his entire collection of action figures into his baths, made obstacles and buildings out of the shampoo bottles.  When he was old enough for showers, he would cover the plastic walls in special washable bath paint that he got for Christmas and he would sing to himself, convinced that no one else could hear.  When he got frustrated or stuck in a drawing or design, taking a shower always seemed to be what gave him room to think his way through it.  Maybe it was the rhythmic sound of the water hitting the ground, or the massage on his skin, or the warmth getting his blood flowing. Or maybe it was just because being in an enclosed space finally gave his thoughts a surface to bounce off.

He takes his time, standing under the spray of the water and thinking more candidly than he’s let himself in the last six weeks, trying to compartmentalize his feelings like he used to be so good at doing.

By the time Chris is wiping the foggy mirror to brush his teeth, he knows exactly what he’s going to do.

*

His shoes are too new and shiny, rubbing his pinky toes raw, his tie is crooked, and there’s paint under his fingernails, but all Chris can think when he looks in the mirror one last time before subjecting himself to Lea is that he looks _good._  

Lea basically screams in his face as soon as he opens the door, just stopping herself from jumping and clinging to him _(“Can’t wrinkle such a handsome suit!”)_. 

Chris tells her honestly that she looks beautiful and she does, simple black dress with a scandalously low-cut back and heels still not high enough to make a difference next to Cory.  There’s a certain softness to her, her tan fading and her eye makeup lighter than usual.

“Darren’s going to slap himself,” she says impishly, smoothing Chris’s collar, and he’s so light with happiness and bubbling over with what he’s been holding back from telling her that he makes another decision then and there.

“Maybe so,” Chris concedes, “but I think he’ll be more concerned about how many hickies he could have hid underneath it.”

“Christopher!” Lea shrieks, confused at first and then-- she hits Chris’s arm.  “You guys are dating, aren’t you.  You’re fucking dating, and you didn’t _tell_ me?!”

It feels better than Chris thought it would to hear someone else say it.  “Yes,” Chris breathes, exhales all the tension that was still lurking between his shoulder blades.  “We decided we would tell everyone tonight, but I wanted to tell you first. Just act surprised later.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to slap Darren, too,” Lea says, rolling her eyes even though she’s smiling hugely.  Chris pulls her into a hug, bends down far enough that she can loop her arms around his neck.

“I’m so happy for you,” she says, murmurs right into his ear.  Chris squeezes her tight, wishes he had been a good friend earlier.

“I’m so happy for _you_ ,” he says, makes sure she knows he means it.  “And I’m sorry for being a shitty person. And for hiding my relationship from you.”  He almost adds _and for accidentally agreeing to let you visit because I wasn’t listening_ , but maybe he’ll save that particular revelation for another time.

“You’re too damn cute for me to stay mad at you,” Lea says airily, taking up the lint roller on Chris’s counter and making him turn slowly so she can run him down with it. Chris makes sure that Brian has water before he leaves, though Brian himself is making himself scarce, and lets Lea put her arm through his to make it down the stairs.

“It’s your big night!” Lea says excitedly, sliding into the passenger seat of Chris’s car.

“Yeah, it is,” Chris says mostly to himself, smiling down at his lap and thoughts far from Lea’s mindless chatter.

*

The StraightforwarD offices look totally transformed even from the street, the whole lobby glowing with low, warm light.  “Wow,” Lea says excitedly, leading the way through the glass double doors.

“Wow,” Chris echoes as they cross the threshold into the intimate, joyous affair.  There’s music coming from somewhere, a bright, modern instrumental with a beat that matches the pulse of the crowd.  There are beautifully-dressed people everywhere, holding cocktails and grabbing canapés off trays and grouped excitedly around the fancy red velvet curtain hiding the finished mural.

They find Dianna first, and she steps up to kiss Chris’s cheek immediately.  As soon as she hears Lea’s name, she embraces her like an old friend.  “Thank god Cory found you,” Dianna says, gripping Lea’s forearms. Lea smiles at her shoes, a reaction Chris finds unusual.  He tilts his head curiously, but Dianna is already taking her hand, insisting on telling her embarrassing details about Cory’s childhood.  Chris starts to follow, but Dianna catches his eye and shakes her head, saying, “A little birdy told me that _someone_ is looking for you.”

It’s Chris’s turn to blush, then, stuttering after them long after they’ve disappeared into some other corner of the party.  He looks around, but there’s no familiar faces in the crowd that he can see.  The little makeshift bar set up at Dianna’s desk has no line, so Chris steps up to order a Diet Coke (with a splash of rum-- something to calm his frazzled nerves) just to occupy his hands.

He doesn’t stand alone long, not even two sips into his drink when the crowd parts and Darren is walking towards him, hair tamed but still curly, stubble that’s halfway to beard, and beaming from behind the same glasses he wore the first day Chris met him.  There’s a sort of deja vu, like with this place so transformed, and the two of them dressed up and feeling nothing at all like the people they were six weeks ago, it’s the same meeting in a parallel universe or something.  Chris knows that Darren would make him feel like this, unbelievably happy and terrifyingly complete, no matter when or where they found each other.

“Hey,” Chris breathes, closing his eyes as Darren darts in to kiss his cheek briefly, an innocent peck.  But there’s nothing friendly in the way his eyes glitter when he pulls back, the way he keeps his hand tight-gripped on Chris’s bicep.

“Hey, yourself,” Darren says, low and honey-warm, and Chris’s mouth twists up, a stab of heat in his gut as his body reacts to Darren’s tone.

“ _Behave_ yourself,” Chris corrects him, leaning in close for just a second, just to watch Darren’s eyes widen and hear his sharp inhale above the noise of the crowd.

Darren raises an eyebrow and his face breaks into a grin.  “Come on, I’ve talked about you to practically every person in this room.  They’re all dying to meet the brilliant artist laureate of Cambria.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing,” Chris laughs, then adds seriously, “And what exactly did you tell them?”  But Darren is already pulling him into a group of strangers.

Chris finds it’s easy to talk to strangers with Darren as a conduit, letting him take the lead. He spends most conversations refuting Darren’s vast overstatement of his artistic abilities and leaning towards the hand that seems to stay on his lower back, his shoulder, his wrist, the body that’s really a lot closer than can be attributed to just trying to hear each other better.  With Darren, there’s touch and laughter and happiness so effortless that Chris lets himself get lost in it, becoming more bold knowing that Darren is there to catch him if he needs him.

Chris can’t remember a single person’s name but he remembers their handshakes and their laughs.  Darren has managed to get him around to most of the room and Chris is feeling like his ego might never deflate after a head-spinning deluge of praise (that Darren, of course, insists he deserves) when the lights brighten and the room begins to quiet. 

Cory is standing even taller than usual over the crowd-- probably standing on a chair.  “Well it’s about time for what you’ve all been waiting for, the big unveiling of our mural!  If I could have the two artists up here with me, please?”

Chris and Darren excuse themselves from their last group (two town officials and a member of the chamber of commerce, who seem very interested in their work) and pick their way through the crowd, Darren smiling and nodding and schmoozing like he has been all night, Chris trying not to touch anyone more than is necessary, slipping through the crowd after him.

They make it up to where a tiny makeshift stage has been set up, standing to the side of it and nodding politely at the crowd.  Cory tells everyone to move to surround the stage and see the unveiling, getting inevitably swallowed in the crowd.  In the general shuffle and chaos, Chris takes a deep breath and knows this is his chance.

“I’ve changed my mind about long-distance relationships,” he says, as loudly and clearly as he dares.

“What’s that?” Darren says, double-taking and leaning closer to him, bemused smile fighting with confused brow.

“If you have to go back to San Francisco, fine. If you have to move to L.A., fine. I don’t want to leave this town, but I don’t want to leave you either. You’re my home, too.”

Chris swallows thickly as Darren’s whole face softens. “Chris, you--”

“Okay! Okay, I’m here now,” Cory’s far-reaching voice booms, and Darren stops talking reluctantly.  Chris’s heart is thrumming with anticipation and the persistent bright throb of hope.  He just manages not to burst out of his skin when Darren reaches across the scant six inches of space between them to hold his hand.

“So, three months ago,” Cory continues, smiling out at the crowd, “when we were getting into the final stages of renovations and I was ready to tear my hair out and Dianna was ready to help me do it, I had this crazy idea about a mural. Something that would bring color and life into this really monochromatic modern design that I got talked into by a very well-meaning designer.  As usual, when I get to dreaming, Dianna is the one who gets stuck with all the work.  She told me right away exactly what artists she had in mind, two artists to deal with the short deadline and the scope of the project, and two to kind of symbolize the value we put on interpersonal support and teamwork at StraightforwarD.

“You’ve all heard about our program and the work that we do, and many of you here tonight are corporate and individual donors who have helped us to get to where we are today, and I can’t thank you enough.  As of tonight, StraightforwarD has gone from a four-person meeting in my crummy apartment living room to a business that provides life-long, extended rehabilitation care specifically for recurring rehab patients, and will continue to do so for many years to come.”  The audience breaks out into applause and Cory clasps his hands in front of him, shaking his head gratefully.  Chris smiles, proud of his friend.

“And now,” Cory says, raising his hand for silence, “before we unveil, a toast.  To Dianna, my right-hand girl and dearest friend.  To all of you, who have made all of this possible.  To overcoming old demons and for finding new reasons to fight them, even when you least expect it.  To moving forward.”

 _To moving forward,_ the crowd murmurs in return, and Darren and Chris, who left their drinks behind on a waiter’s tray, hold their linked hands up.  Chris can see Lea’s head for a second out in the crowd, exactly in the spot to which Cory delivered the last part of his toast.

Cory takes a long swig of his drink and wipes the corner of his mouth on his cuff.  “Of course, the creators of the centerpiece of the evening.  Our artists, Chris Colfer and Darren Criss--” Cory gestures, and that’s their cue.  Darren drops Chris’s hand but puts it on the small of his back instead, both of them waving a little and nodding at the applause, louder from some of the people they had been talking to earlier.

“These two,” Cory says, separating them to sling an arm around each of their necks in turn, “have been the heart and soul of this project.  Nearly every single night over the last six weeks they’ve stayed up at insane hours to finish this.  They took a really vague idea I had and turned it into something meaningful, a real piece of human art that represents exactly what our mission is all about.  Thank you both for all of your hard work and generosity in donating this beautiful artwork to our lobby.”

The audience applauds again, Lea cheering like a proud soccer mom as Cory squeezes them both close.  “And don’t worry,” he says, loud enough that the crowd can hear him too, “I won’t force you into ramen by making the next mural pro bono.”

Chris is more than a little confused, forcing a smile and looking over at Darren.  _Next mural?_ Darren’s soaking up the crowd, laughing with someone he sees and not paying attention.

“And without further ado,” Cory announces grandly, letting Chris and Darren get back out of the way as he goes to pull the curtain aside.

“What did he mean by _next mural_ , do you know about that?” Chris hisses at Darren.

“The completed lobby of StraightforwarD Headquarters!” Cory yells as he pulls the cord and the curtain falls down to more applause from an audience that’s pressing closer to see.

They get pushed out of the throng, but Chris hardly notices.

“Yeah, I do,” Darren admits, smiling like he’s barely withholding in a secret.

“You do?”  Chris puts his hands on his hips, ducks his head a little so Darren has to look him in the eye.

“Cory talked to me about their new bigger treatment facilities just outside of town, about how the staff heard about the mural for headquarters and demanded a complementary one at the treatment center.”

“He did? He asked you and not me? You don’t even _live--”_

“You see that was the problem,” Darren interrupts.  “Cory didn’t want to tell you about it until he told me, because they didn’t want _me_ to paint another mural-- they want _us_ to paint another mural. We’re a package deal, it seems.”

“Oh, are we?” Chris asks, starting to catch on, smile spreading.  “And what did you tell Cory?”

“Well, the owner of the townhouse I’m subletting gave me another month to sort things out, but I’ll get a hotel room if I have to until I can find a more permanent place.”

Chris rocks up onto his toes and then back, the question on the tip of his tongue but still afraid of the answer, even when Darren is grinning so hard his eyes and cheeks are crinkled with happiness.

“So, you….?”

“I’m staying in Cambria,” Darren says in a rush.  “Indefinitely. Forever, if you’ll have me.  I can paint anywhere, but I’ve found that the place I paint best is next to you. I’m much too selfish to let something like that slip away.  Wherever you go, I’m going to follow.”

Chris exhales slow, letting the warmth and light of those words fill him up instead.

“I love you,” Chris says for the first time and feels for the hundredth time, tastes the words on his tongue and finds they don’t seem special at all, just truth. Something he’s always carried with him, now letting it rise to the surface, revealed.

He gets a split second flash of the most gorgeous, luminous smile before Darren is wrapping an arm low on his waist and guiding his jaw forward to meet his lips.  Chris presses into him immediately, running his hands over Darren’s shoulders to link behind his neck, and kissing until they’re both smiling too hard and then pushing on anyway.  It’s joy and completion and so much love, unafraid of feeling that his whole heart is in Darren’s hands.

Applause is what makes them break apart, surprised and half-forgotten that the world was still going on outside their tiny bubble.  Chris fights the urge to bury his face in Darren’s shoulder when it’s obvious that the whole room of people is clapping _for them_ , smiling and whooping.  He can see Lea now where she joined Cory up on the makeshift stage, leaning into his arm wrapped around her and smiling hugely.  She holds up two thumbs, tells him it’s okay.

“Um, thank you?” Chris says uncertainly, and the crowd settles a little, the music starting to play again.

“Good god,” Chris says under his breath, not even getting a chance to relax as he sees Dianna glowering, winding her way through the crowd.

“Oh boy,” Darren says, sounding nauseous, and Chris leans over to kiss his temple.

“I cannot _believe_ you two!” Dianna starts in right away, trying so hard to look upset but her giddy smile totally ruining the effect.  She smacks them both on the shoulder and pulls them into a hug.

“Well hello, Roberto,” Chris says, spotting him over Dianna’s shoulder.  He looks guilty, like he didn’t want Chris to see him.  No, Chris knows that face-- it’s being _caught_.  He accepts Roberto’s hug and his unspecific congratulations and raises an eyebrow at his thin excuse to get another drink and Dianna’s even thinner excuse to disappear less than a minute later.

“Have fun!” Chris says after her, laughing at her wave that definitely flipped him off somewhere inside it.

“How long are they going to be able to keep _that_ a secret?” Darren says, amused.  Chris can still see Dianna’s blonde hair when he stretches up on his toes, can see her accidentally-on-purpose meeting back up with Roberto.

“Well, we barely lasted a month. I can’t say they’ll be much better.”  Chris leans in and kisses Darren’s cheek, surprised when Darren turns his head and kisses him back on the lips.

“That’s probably true,” Darren says, taking Chris’s hand in his like it’s nothing.  And even though it’s not a big deal, Chris hopes it never stops _feeling_ like it is.

They don’t get two steps back into the crowd before someone is making them stop for compliments and congratulations, and Chris lets Darren take the lead again, relaxing into his side.

He looks up at their mural, _first_ mural apparently, and wonders what the other people in the crowd are seeing.  The colors, maybe, the contrast in the bright blues and reds of the swirling, lush floral sections and the stark change to the grayscale of the geometric framework that seems to underlay them.  The shapes, certainly, loose rambling curves stark next to sharp angles and ruler-straight lines.  But what he wonders most if they really see, especially the struggling addicts he knows are somewhere in the crowd, is the hope and transformation that he and Darren wanted to capture.  It may not be immediately clear to everyone, but the baby blue egg to the left, half-hidden in leaves and fat green buds on limbs, is what becomes the huge, majestic phoenix in reds and yellows on the right, wings spread and beak tipped up towards the sky as if in song.

He looks to the crowd to see who is still looking-- a man over there, a woman nearby, a couple he can barely make out but knows are motionless, faces tipped towards the painting.  He looks at them, and he knows that they may not all get it just yet, but they’re starting to.

Darren’s hand tightens in his and he steps up next to Chris.  He blinks, and finds the few people that had been in front of him have moved away to another part of the gala. It’s just the wall in front of them both, now.

“What happened to…?”

“Mrs. Carmichael?  I gave her my email address and excused myself.  She seemed to understand.”

Chris nods, exhales slowly as Darren tips his head onto Chris’s shoulder to rest there.  Chris lets go of Darren’s hand to put his arm around his back instead, squeeze him close and rest his cheekbone gently against his curly head.

He can feel Darren breathe underneath him, looks down to see he’s staring up at the mural, eyes wide.  Chris looks too, wants to see what he sees.  He knows it’s only a matter of time before they get pulled away to talk to someone else, but he’ll take what he can get for now.

***

## Epilogue:

“Darren really, did no one ever teach you how to pack? Not even give you a piece of advice?” Chris huffs as he adjusts his slipping hold on the heavy, falling-apart cardboard box.

“That-- would be-- a _no,_ ” Darren grits out from the other side, walking slowly backwards and looking down to keep from tipping them both back down the stairs that they’ve nearly gotten up.

“We should have called your parents,” Chris complains again, going up as fast as Darren can safely pull him.  “Hell, I’ll even say we should have called _my_ parents.  What about Cory and Roberto?  We could have dragged them away from Lea and Dianna for a few hours.  Why do we even have friends if they won’t help us move?”

“Because, honey,” Darren grunts, sighing in relief when they make it up to the landing.  “We’re not even moving furniture. We’re moving two carloads of boxes up one straight flight of stairs.  And Cory has seen enough of me for the past two months.”

“But _still_ ,” Chris says, fingers starting to go numb and muscles straining with keeping the box off the floor and the giant rip in the side from splitting open.

“Here,” Darren says, and Chris drops it with a little more force than necessary, the box finally giving way and books spilling out all over their living room.

“Honestly,” Chris says, catching his breath with his hands on his hips.  “Let’s not stop now, I want to get them all in before a summer storm blows up and ruins everything on the sidewalk.”

“Chris,” Darren says, pulling up the hem of his sweat-soaked t-shirt to wipe his brow.  “That’s the last box.  We’re done.”

“Really?” Chris says, moving to the window to look down into the street.  Darren’s car trunk is still wide open but he can’t see any boxes.  The sidewalk is clear.

“Really,” Darren says, smiling, and Chris leans in to kiss him, all salty sweat and exhaustion and, in spite of it all, elation.  From now on, it isn’t Chris’s apartment anymore.  It won’t be just his things on the shelves and his clothes in the closet.  He’ll have Darren’s stubble in _their_ sink and Darren’s wet towels on _their_ floor and he will absolutely loathe and adore every second of it.

The gallery downstairs isn’t just Chris’s, either.  He’s put Roberto to work making room for more displays, marking down his Cambria landscape paintings to get them out.  There’s a new sign going up in the window too, and Darren has absolutely no idea about any of it.  Chris has a whole surprise planned for the next day, after they unpack and christen _their_ bed (they picked out a new mattress together, so it still counts) and maybe the whole of their apartment.

It’s been fun to plan a surprise for Darren that he knows he’s going to love, doing something special for him because Chris wants to, and no other reason.  It gets him thinking about another kind of surprise, one that comes with a ring that Darren can wear on his left hand.

He smiles down at Darren, who’s crouched sorting his books in some kind of organization Chris can’t quite ascertain. 

Maybe not now, but one day.

“I almost forgot!” Darren says suddenly, straightening up and looking at the boxes stacked through the living room and into the bedroom.

“Forgot what?” Chris calls after him, looking down at the books.  Complete collections of artists’ work, mostly, Degas and Van Gogh and Monet that he can see.  He looks into the remnants of the box and, sure enough, there’s an entire stack of colorful comic books.  Chris smiles, shaking his head.

“You have a hammer and some nails, right?” Darren sounds muffled on the other side of all the boxes.

“Yeah?” Chris asks curiously, but still steps over to the kitchen to rummage through his drawers and find them.  Brian is nosing curiously at the intrusions into his living space, rubbing his face on everything he can find.  Making everything smell like home, Chris thinks, scratching behind his ears.

He peers into the box that Brian is scratching at the corner of, trying to make sure nothing gets ruined before they even unpack.  Something colorful catches his eye in the shifting contents, and Chris rummages around to pull out-- a framed cell phone snapshot of Chris lying on paint-smeared tarp, his bare backside a bright, rainbow smear of hearts and swirls trailing right down to his ass.  Chris laughs out loud, remembering the first time Darren showed it to him on his phone, how he had felt bad for ruining Darren’s plans to profess his love.  Darren had assured him, through insistent kisses and a very convincing tongue, that he didn’t hold it against him.

Chris doesn’t know where Darren was displaying his bare ass in his townhouse-- probably sitting right under his finished canvases, another piece of art he’s unashamedly proud of.  He brushes dust off the glass and props it up right on the coffee table.  It looks good there.  He’ll just have to remember to put it away before they have guests.

“Found it!” Darren says triumphantly, boxes scraping as he picks his way back to the living room.

Chris laughs out loud when he recognizes the two canvases in Darren’s hands, straightening up to take them and hold them at arm’s length.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe this. I mean, I can, because it’s _you_ , but I can’t believe you saved these.”

“Hey, these are _art_ ,” Darren insists, propping the two canvases up on the back of the couch and judging the distance to hammer in nails to hang them there.

“Of course they are,” Chris says, half-teasing as Darren determinedly puts each canvas on a nail, adjusting them until they hang straight.

“Perfect,” Darren says, climbing off the couch to stand beside Chris, looking at him with his heart full-bright in his eyes.

And they shouldn’t look like they belong there, all colors of paint splattered and smeared across the stretched fabric, sloppy X’s and O’s on one and a jagged heart on the other, but they do.  Chris smiles at the initials scrawled in the corner, _CC & DC,_ like the ones in the corner of three murals now, the ones that will go up in the window downstairs tomorrow.

“Perfect,” Chris whispers, leaning in to cover Darren’s pleased grin with his lips.  Darren nudges him towards the couch and Chris lets him, deciding that the boxes can wait another hour.


End file.
